Cannes Competition Starts With an Instant Sensation as ‘Sound of Falling' Premieres to Rave Reviews and Palme d'Or Buzz
German filmmaker Mascha Schilinski's 'Sound of Falling' debuted on Wednesday afternoon in Cannes, the first film from the competition slate to premiere at the Grand Lumière. If the rave reviews are any indication, it appears the festival already has a major Palme d'Or contender on its hands. The drama is Schilinski's follow-up to her 2017 debut 'Dark Blue Girl.'
While 'The Sound of Falling' was met with a standing ovation on the shorter side for the festival (three-and-a-half minutes), the post-screening reaction was more or less hobbled by the theater turning over for the next showing: Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' premiere. Schilinski also quieted the audience down when she took the microphone to thank her cast. The crowd continued to cheer as they exited the theater to make way for the 'Mission' premiere.
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Variety's Guy Lodge hailed the movie as a 'shattering' epic that sends its director 'into the big leagues' with an 'astonishingly poised and ambitious second feature.' Film critic Alison Wilmore wrote for Vulture that 'we may have already seen the best movie at Cannes.' IndieWire's David Ehrlich praised the movie as a 'mesmerizing stunner.' Sensational raves followed in The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian and more. The movie is seeking U.S. distribution.
Schilinski's film centers on four girls — Alma, Erika, Angelika, and Lenka — who each spend their youth on the same farm in northern Germany. 'As the home evolves over a century, echoes of the past linger in its walls,' the film's synopsis explains. 'Though separated by time, their lives begin to mirror each other.'
In an interview with Variety ahead of the premiere, Schilinski said, 'This film is, above all, about remembering. About how we remember and how we perceive. At first, you're trapped in the moment and in your body, but over time, when you look back, you're able to look at yourself from the outside.'
As she and co-writer Louise Peter penned the screenplay together on a farm, Schilinski said she was struck by 'the simultaneity of time.' She recalled: 'There are spirits and ghosts in us, and ghosts that live on this old farm. When you enter a room, you don't know what happened there, but you still feel it … This place had been abandoned for 50 years, but everything was still there, including a spoon a farmer put down for the last time.'
Thus, 'Sound of Falling' explores how memories shape our destinies. 'They burn under their skin,' Schilinski said. 'When we talk about memory, what can we actually access? Which parts of our past? Because of the way memory works, sometimes it's not the biggest traumas or biggest events that condition us the most.'
'Sound of Falling' is produced by Maren Schmitt, Lucas Schmidt and Lasse Scharpen (for Studio Zentral) with ZDF/Das Kleine Fernsehspiel (Burkhard Althoff and Melvina Kotios) and funded by Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM), Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM) and Deutscher Filmförderfonds (DFFF). MK2 is representing the international sales rights.
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