Sound of Falling

You can feel the presence of ghosts in the rooms and environs of a rural farmhouse in German filmmaker Mascha Schilinski’s highly accomplished multigenerational saga. Sound of Falling skips back and forth through time, alighting on moments of both horror and grace across a century in the lives of four women—adolescent and adult—inhabiting the same unsettled spaces. Using a fragmentary, collage-like approach that unites characters from different eras, from the turn of the 20th century to the post–World World II era to the years of GDR rule and on to the present, Schilinski treats history like a constant haunting. Both sobering and dreamlike, with moments of genuine tenderness, her film bears witness to cycles of trauma and creates a devastating indictment of historical patriarchal abuse. Above all, it confirms the arrival of a major new talent, whose visionary narrative technique creates a fresh and striking cinematic grammar. Joint winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A MUBI release.