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Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sound of Falling' Review: Four Generations of German Girls Suffer the Same Growing Pains in Mascha Schilinski's Mesmerizing Stunner
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 with one of her tied legs up in string, eager to know what losing a limb might feel like. Unbeknownst to her, cherubic little Alma (Hanna Heckt) expressed a similar curiosity some 30 years earlier when she played dead on the parlor room couch, posing in the same position that her late grandmother's corpse had been placed for a post-mortem daugerreotype. More from IndieWire Here's How to Find Work When Entertainment Jobs Are Scarce Documentarian Sacha Jenkins Has Died: 'Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues' Filmmaker Started as a Journalist And yet, coming of age in the German Democratic Republic of the 1980s, Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) might think she's inventing her girlish impulse towards self-negation when she fantasizes about lying down in front of her father's tank-sized land imprinter as it mulches her body into the earth, just as Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) — living in our present — wonders if she's the first person to be looked at in a way that burns under her skin. We rarely see these characters overlap in a literal sense, and their specific relationships to one another remain hard to define (it would take a professional arborist to untangle the roots of this movie's family tree, at least on first watch), but 'Sound of Falling' is deeply attuned to the echoes between them. Somehow both hyper-subjective and hauntingly disembodied all at once, Schilinski's recursive second feature floats through the decades like an errant thought hoping to find someone who might recognize it as one of their own. The film lopes forwards and backwards in time without notice or warning, Fabian Gamper's camera often peering through keyholes and floorboards in order to reconcile the tunnel vision of being alive with a quietly Teutonic awe at the vastness of having lived. Some eye-level shots are clearly tethered to the perspective of a certain character, while others seem to stem from the POV of an invisible spirit crouching next to them, as if assigning physical dimension to the third-person of our remembered pasts. Intimate and infinite in equal measure, the movie's freeform structure and emotional tonality might evoke everything from 'The Hours' and 'The Virgin Suicides' to Robert Zemeckis' 'Here,' and Charli XCX's 'Girl, so confusing' (why not), but its style found me returning to Edward Yang's magnificent 'Yi Yi' as the most immediate point of reference. Specifically, the character of eight-year-old Yang-Yang, who photographs the backs of people's heads in order to show them the parts of themselves they can't see on their own. 'You always see things from the outside, but never yourself,' one of Schilinski's characters muses in a snippet of the diaristic voiceover that holds this film together. She rues the fact that blushing externalizes the exact emotion that someone is trying to hide, just as Angelika — who's cannonballing into her sexuality, and rumored to be sleeping with her uncle — resents that she can will her legs to move, but not her heart to stop beating. Do our brains flip the world rightside up, or do they force us to see it upside down? 'Sound of Falling' isn't disinterested in personal drama, but that drama is reliably sublimated into the perspective through which it's experienced. So tenderly in touch with the shared but unspoken traumas that are visited upon her cast of young women, Schilinski mines tremendous sorrow from the secret poetics of girlhood; she weaponizes cinema's ability to access the deepest interiors of human feeling, and swirls her characters together in a way that tortures them for their subjectivity. The more intimately we come to understand the hurt and heartache that Alma, Erika, Angelika, and Lenka all experience in their own ways, the more it kills us that they aren't able to commiserate with each other (the film's temporal porousness is heightened by its glancing attention to various social and political borders, some of which are more easily crossed than others). Nothing is new in this world, but pain turns us all into pioneers. If only the film's characters had the chance to compare notes, perhaps they might not share the same affinity for self-erasure. But they do feel one another (intangibly, the way that an amputee might scratch at a phantom limb), and the 150-minute 'Sound of Falling' is held aloft by its compelling attention to sense memory. As one of the girls puts it: 'It's funny how something can hurt that's no longer there,' and that hurt accrues an ethereal power of its own as Schilinski doubles back to flesh it out. Her film is piloted by sense memory, its story (a lot) less concerned with conflict or incident than it is with the buzz of a housefly, the bite of a fish, or the beat of that one pop song that Lenka and her only friend listen to all summer long. Brittle silences give way to an ominous hum, and occasionally to the fuzz of a record needle in search of the groove it needs to know its purpose. It's the perfect soundtrack for a reverie that spins in smaller and smaller circles until its attention grows focused enough to observe a single mote of sublime transcendence — and to defy the gravity that's been accumulated from almost 100 years of solitude. 'It's too bad you never know when you're at your happiest,' one of the girls laments, and it's true that none of these characters may ever be able to contextualize their emotions with the perspective necessary to survive them. But Schilinski's arrestingly prismatic film — so hazy and dense with detail that it feels almost impossible to fully absorb the first time through — keeps sloshing its way through the years until those blind spots begin to seem revelatory in their own right. These girls can only see so much of themselves on their own, but 'Sound of Falling' so vividly renders the blank space between them that it comes to feel like a lucid window into the stuff of our world that only the movies could ever hope to show us. 'Sound of Falling' premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Who Will Buy Cannes' Buzziest Sales Title, ‘Sound of Falling'?
This week on 'Screen Talk,' we take you behind the scenes of the goings-on at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, where we recorded on Day Two. Politics dominated the first press conferences with director Thierry Frémaux and the nine-member jury led by Juliette Binoche. They turned up for opening night as well, where Leonardo DiCaprio presented an honorary Palme d'Or to Robert De Niro, and Quentin Tarantino bounded onto the stage to declare the festival open. The opening night film 'Leave One Day,' from French rookie Amélie Bonnin, a strictly local jukebox musical with the actors singing French pop hits of the '80s, will not travel. Later that night, DiCaprio attended the gala dinner with De Niro at the Palm Beach, where Anne enjoyed talking with 'Anora' Oscar-winners Sean Baker and Samantha Quan (he produced, wrote, and edited Critics' Week entry 'Left-Handed Girl'), the hilarious Michael Covino ('Splitsville'), Amazon's Scott Foundas, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard (Sony Pictures Classics), and Searchlight's Matthew Greenfield, among others. More from IndieWire 'Eleanor the Great' Review: Don't Let the Feel-Good Plotline of Scarlett Johansson's June Squibb-Starring Directorial Debut Fool You Cannes 2025 Palme d'Or Contenders Ranked: Who Could Win the Top Prize? When we recorded the podcast on Thursday, the first breakout film of the fest, Mascha Schilinski's German-language 'Sound of Falling,' led the Screen International jury grid (by Friday, Sergei Loznitsa's 'Two Prosecutors' was on top). Ryan and Ane both admire 'Sound of Falling' with some caveats. Most buyers admire the bravura filmmaking, but mainly art-house distributors are circling. Anne attended the IMAX showing of 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' which features several satisfying Tom Cruise death-defying stunts shot in IMAX. (You must see the film in IMAX.) Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie explain the $400-millon movie's craziest stunts here. Ryan suspects the Entity enemy is not only an AI but a metaphor for streaming services, where Cruise is leaning on his legacy as the man who saved Hollywood (and will keep saving it) with 'Top Gun: Maverick.' Anne thinks this one, billed as the finale, will do better than the last, which was dinged by 'Barbenheimer.' That doesn't mean it will make its money back: while the film's ending leaves a sequel open, the box office will tell that tale. We also dig into big news out of Cannes that Neon has hired Cinetic Media executive Ryan Werner as its next global president. (His lieutenant Courtney Ott will now run Cinetic Media marketing.) And we share our thoughts on a few titles premiering in the Competition and other sections. Ryan previews 'Sirat,' 'Left-Handed Girl,' and 'The Little Sister,' while Anne raves about Ugo Bienvenu's 'Arco,' a charming French animated film with an eco of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Palme d'Or Projections: Has Cannes Found Its Early Front-runner?
Survey journalists during the first few days of the Cannes Film Festival, and you're likely to hear some grumbling. Though it may seem uncharitable to complain in such a glittery, glamorous location, it's practically tradition for critics here to shrug at the initial salvo of movies, wondering how long it will take for a viable contender to emerge that could win the prestigious Palme d'Or. Sometimes, it takes quite awhile. Unlike other major film festivals, Cannes, which started Tuesday, doesn't front-load its highest-profile titles: Significant movies unspool every day over two weeks, and the Palme winner often does not debut until the festival's back half. This year, though, an early pacesetter seems to have emerged. Directed by Mascha Schilinski, 'Sound of Falling' skips through time to track four girls who have lived on the same German farm over the course of a century. From the prewar era to the modern day, these young women contend with many of the same issues, from nascent sexual curiosity to brutally violent repression. It's arty and lengthy in the way that Cannes juries often favor, and many of the early reviews were rapturous, especially those by critics who had prescreened the movie before the festival began. To hear those scribes tell it, 'Sound of Falling' is 'transfixing' (The Hollywood Reporter), 'astonishingly poised and ambitious'(Variety), and 'a high-water mark that will be hard for another feature to reach' (Vulture). Still, the response on the ground wasn't entirely positive after Wednesday's premiere. A critic friend texted me that he found the film 'pretty vacuous' and the fest's popular Screen International grid, which compiles scores from a dozen critics on a scale from one to four, gave 'Sound of Falling' an average of 2.8. That's respectable, but last year's Palme winner, 'Anora,' hit 3.3, while the previous victor, 'Anatomy of a Fall,' earned a 3.0. Can passion win out over consensus? Stay tuned.
Indian Express
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
The Bharat Pavilion gets inaugurated at Cannes 2025, Anupam Kher and Shekhar Gupta attend ceremony
The Bharat Pavilion has been inaugurated at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The inauguration ceremony was attended by IFFI and NFDC festival director Shekhar Kapur, veteran actor Anupam Kher, and Anne-Louise Mésadieu, Paris Region elected official, ambassador, and special delegate for diplomatic relations. In his inaugural address, Shekhar Kapur highlighted the transformational power of cinema and India's evolving role as a creative powerhouse on the world stage. 'The art of storytelling is not the art of storytelling; it is the art of teaching others how to listen to your stories. And that's why film festivals are important because we all come over here from all over the world, and we tell each other our stories. That's why we have to go on having film festivals. 'Our cultures will survive if we share our culture; our stories will survive if we share our stories. We, as people, as humanity, will survive if we tell our stories because underneath every story, there is a mythology that's common to all of us,' Kapur said at the inauguration on Wednesday. ALSO READ | Express at Cannes: Tom Cruise's Final Reckoning and a maddeningly marvellous Sound Of Falling Anupam Kher, who is presenting his film Tanvi The Great in Cannes Market, reflected on the journey of Indian cinema and his personal experiences of representing India globally. 'I am eight years younger than my country, and we both grew up together. We have really, really done well. This is my first time in Cannes; I'm so happy to be here at the 'Maha Kumbh of cinema,'' the 70-year-old actor said. The IFFI 2025 poster and trailer were also launched at the event. 'IFFI's new poster is a reflection of 'the convergence of creativity and technology'. India is ready to embrace technology and play a dominant role in the global content creation space,' Gautam Bhanot, GM, Film Promotion (Festivals, Market and International Participation), NFDC India, said. One of the key highlights was the launch of the India Film Guide, a comprehensive resource that showcases India's vast filmmaking talent, incentives for international co-productions, and filming locations. Anne-Louise Mésadieu expressed admiration for India's rich cinematic history and its ability to tell stories that transcend borders. She emphasised the importance of such cultural bridges in fostering global understanding and diplomacy. Also Read | 'The only choice is to learn to embrace life, the good and the bad': Robert De Niro at Cannes The Bharat Pavilion is organised by NFDC and FICCI under the aegis of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, at Cannes. During the festival, Neeraj Ghaywan's Homebound, starring Ishaan Khatter, Janhvi Kapoor, and Vishal Jethwa, will be screened in the Un Certain Regard segment. A restored version of legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray's 1970 classic Aranyer Din Ratri is part of the Cannes Classics segment. Filmmaker Payal Kapadia, who created history by becoming the first from India to win the Grand Prix at Cannes in May last year, is part of the jury panel, led by French star Juliette Binoche, for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fawesome Strikes 14-Film Deal With Iris Indie Global, Including Ed Westwick & Billy Blair Pic ‘Tonic'
EXCLUSIVE: Free streamer Fawesome has struck a deal with Iris Indie Global for a slate of 14 independent films, including the Ed Westwick and Billy Blair thriller Tonic. The pair has partnered to curate the films for Fawesome's services in North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. More from Deadline 'Sound Of Falling': Filmmaker Mascha Schilinski On Generational Trauma Epic's Origins - Cannes Two-Time Palme D'Or Winner Ken Loach Shares Open Letter Remembering Palestinian Journalist Fatima Hassouna & Calls For An End To The Violence In Gaza Viaplay Content Distribution Taking Financial Drama 'Golden Boys' From 'Quicksand' Maker FLX & Film i Väst To Market Among them is Tonic, which stars Blair (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) as Sebastian Poe, a struggling jazz pianist who is given 24 hours to kill a dangerous drug dealer (Westwick) by a crooked cop (Jaso Coviello), and spirals into a moral and emotional tailspin. Lori Petty is also in the cast. Pic was awarded Best Thriller at the Los Angeles International Film Festival, played at several other fests and is set to screen in Cannes on May 19. Following the initial slate, the pair will adds a 'steady rollout' of exclusive films over coming months, spanning drama, thriller, romance and documentary. Iris Indie Global positions itself as a production, distribution and finance company that focuses on 'transparency and meaningful partnerships,' while the Future Today-owned Fawesome offers a collection about around 150,000 movies, comedy specials, docs and TV shows across genres. 'We're living in an age of extraordinary content – but too many standout indie films are getting lost in crowded streaming menus,' said Milena Rimassa, President of Distribution at Iris Indie Global. 'Future Today and Iris Indie are aligned on the idea that curation and creativity are essential. Together, we have shaped a model that delivers not only reach but resonance – bringing viewers into the heart of the experience.' 'We're proud to deepen our support for the independent film community through this exclusive slate,' said David Di Lorenzo, SVP Content Acquisitions and Partnerships at Future Today. 'These films represent the creativity, courage and diversity that define indie cinema. At Future Today, we're committed to not only acquiring standout content, but also building a platform where these stories can be discovered and appreciated by a wide audience. 'Together, we're designing a new blueprint for indie film success. By fusing digital distribution with personal, live experiences, we're elevating independent film and ensuring it stands out in a crowded marketplace.' 'In a sea of algorithms and passive viewing, we're betting on something more human,' added Rimassa. 'This partnership is about carving out space for great stories – and the people who tell them.' Best of Deadline Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far 'Bridgerton' Season 4: Everything We Know So Far
