Four adolescent girls each spend their youth in the same farmhouse over the last century. Though separated by decades, resonances between their lives emerge: their desires and distress, secrets and truths, encounters with another’s gaze and defiant gaze in return.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.3/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.69/5
Metacritic: 90
TMDB: 6.8/10
Director
Mascha Schilinski
Production
Studio Zentral, Das kleine Fernsehspiel
Cast
Luise Heyer, Lena Urzendowsky, Claudia Geisler-Bading, Lea Drinda, Hanna Heckt, Laeni Geiseler, Florian Geißelmann, Andreas Anke, Susanne Wuest, Gode Benedix, Bärbel Schwarz, Lucas Prisor, Konstantin Lindhorst, Luzia Oppermann, Martin Rother, Filip Schnack, Ninel Geiger, Greta Krämer, Zoë Baier, Anastasia Cherepakha
Where to watch
MUBI
Curator Review
Verdict
A bold, atmospheric, and formally adventurous drama that turns one farmhouse into a haunted vessel for generational trauma, female desire, and the lingering violence of history. It sounds demanding and sometimes opaque, but the emotional and visual ambition make it a strong watch for viewers who like their period drama uncanny and impressionistic.
Best for
art-house drama fans
viewers drawn to feminist storytelling
people who like ghostly, non-linear narratives
festival-film followers
fans of mood-heavy historical cinema
Skip if
you want a straightforward plot
you dislike ambiguity and symbolism
you prefer fast pacing and clear resolutions
you are not in the mood for bleak emotional material
Overview
Sound of Falling treats a rural farmhouse like a memory palace, where each decade leaves behind bruises, secrets, and unfinished lives. The premise is simple, but the execution seems anything but: a layered, sensory drama that links four girls across time through echoes of longing, shame, and resistance.
Worth noting
What stands out is the film’s refusal to separate the intimate from the historical. Private suffering and social pressure bleed into one another, and the house itself becomes a witness, almost a character, carrying the residue of war, patriarchy, and inherited grief. The result is less a conventional period piece than a haunted meditation on womanhood.
Bottom line
This is the kind of film that rewards patience and openness to mood over explanation. If you respond to cinema that feels tactile, poetic, and a little unsettling, it should land strongly; if you need clean narrative lines, it may feel elusive. Either way, it sounds like a serious, distinctive work with real visual and emotional force.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Amelie ♡ (3.5★) · 1973 likes
They all needed a big hug but all they got was Arbeitsunfälle & Generationstraumata
davidehrlich (4★) · 1710 likes
Unfolding like 100 years of home video footage that were shot by the family ghosts, Mascha Schilinski’s rich and mesmeric “Sound of Falling” glimpses four generation of young women as they live, die, and suffuse their memories into the walls of a rural farmhouse in the north German region of Altmark.
In the 1940s, after some of the local boys are maimed by their parents in order to avoid fighting Hitler’s war, teenage Erika (Lea Drinda) hobbles through the halls… more
shookone (4.5★) · 1049 likes
impressionistic period piece, expressionistic ghost house horror, feminist kaleidoscope and an honest film about depression and suicidal ideation - all filmed in the boldest morbidity.
Schilinski's The Doctor Says, I'll Be Alright but I'm Feeling Blue - a title quickly changed into the more digestible Sound of Falling or Looking Into the Sun (specifically for the german market) shortly before the world premiere in Cannes - tells the story of several women in one place - a rural village in… more
Ulysse22 (2★) · 983 likes
Sound of falling asleep
Vincent (4★) · 808 likes
They say germany has no culture until I show them the grab an eel on your bike contest