In die Sonne schauen

So this is the german movie for the Oscars 2026. I hope the Academy is not dazzled by the award this production received at the Cannes Film Festival. It contains only trace elements of a plot, has a runtime of two and a half hours which is far too long, and bores its audience to unbearable levels. After 20 minutes, I looked at the clock for the first time and thought: Oh dear, and I have to endure this for more than two hours. Several people in our cinema left early. They had had enough of the missing dialogues and the constantly similar monologues. The protagonists share something morbid, a kind of death wish. Unfortunately, this totally overrated, not recommendable film is only boring to death.

I had been genuinely looking forward to this film, as the core concept seemed so promising-and a Palme d'Or from Cannes has never let me down over the decades. Until now. This film, however, is unbearably pretentious and painfully slow, packed with hollow assertions that pile up in what feel like endless repetitions. At first, I switched to double speed, hoping for a shift in tone, rhythm, or substance. The next day, I tried starting over. No luck: not a single compelling human interaction in two and a half hours, just intrusive morbidity in every scene.

Then there are those self-important camera movements, paired with ominous soundscapes or abrupt silences, only to dissolve into aimless editing-cuts that seem to lack any forethought about where they're supposed to lead. It might impress some, but to me, it felt amateurish, and repetition only made it worse.

Otherwise, the film fixates obsessively on the body, suicide, mutilation, rural stupor, brickwork, Trabants, men and pigs-all strung together as if they were somehow equivalent. A dash of Tin Drum navel-gazing erotica and a sprinkle of fin-de-siècle Freudian hysteria-is this supposed to be a "female perspective" on things I'm failing to grasp? I sincerely hope not. Thankfully, there were recent films like Toni Erdmann, The Substance, Anatomy of a Fall, ...

It remains a complete mystery to me why this film is so celebrated and showered with awards-though, on closer inspection, the praise seems to hinge on a single phrase repeated ad nauseam: "the intergenerational perpetuation of trauma." Well, I had to write this review just to process the trauma of watching it. :)

Mehdi Salehi Film Critic - Editor-in-Chief of "Green Smile" News Website (Iran)

In a remote farm in Altmark, Germany, century-old walls have absorbed generations of women's suffering. The Sound of Falling, Masha Schilinski's bold cinematic creation, intertwines the lives of four generations of women-not through a linear narrative, but through a living collage of memories, wounded bodies, and inherited silences. As the first contender in the Cannes 2025 Competition, this film hypnotizes the viewer, immersing them in a journey where masterful direction, mesmerizing performances, and haunting sound design blur the line between reality and nightmare.

Direction: Painting History with Light and Shadow Schilinski dares to create a new cinematic language. Fabian Gömper's cinematography-often in a 1:1.37 aspect ratio-acts as a voyeuristic lens, peering through cracks in doors, behind windows, or into dark corners of the house. These "tunnel shots" do more than create a claustrophobic atmosphere-they mimic the childlike perspective of the characters: Alma (Hanna Heck, outstanding) perceives the hidden violence around her as an unknown mystery in the early 20th century; Lenka (Leni Geißler), in the present day, retreats into her headphones, yet the past clings to her like a ghost.

Schilinski moves seamlessly between timelines: a sequence depicting Angelika's (Lena Urzendowsky) imagined suicide in the 1980s suddenly mirrors Erika's (Lia Drinda) death fantasy in the 1940s. These visual rhymes-repeated movements, shared wounds, innocent stares-suggest a tragic fate, as if pain has ingrained itself in the DNA of this land.

Screenplay: The Sound of Breaking Memory Locks Schilinski and Louise Peter liberate the script from the constraints of a conventional narrative. Instead of explaining, they make the audience feel: the scent of straw in the barn, the whispers of sterilized servants, the racing heartbeat of a girl experiencing her first physical intimacy. Dialogue is minimal, yet profoundly weighted: "You always see things from the outside, but you never see yourself."-a statement encapsulating the imprisonment of all the characters.

This narrative style presents a challenge: viewers may find themselves lost in the tangle of names and timelines during the first half. Yet this disorientation is intentional-Schilinski wants us to drown in the sea of untold stories, just like Alma, Erika, Angelika, and Lenka.

Acting: Bodies That Scream History This film rests on the shoulders of its female performers-and they are extraordinary. Hanna Heck (age 11, Alma) gazes with eyes that seem to have witnessed a century of suffering. Her curiosity about death photos shifts into a gaze of horror when she learns that servants were castrated "for safety". Lena Urzendowsky (Angelika) transforms her adolescent body into a weapon-dancing in underwear before a mirror is not a display of desire, but an attempt to reclaim ownership over a body that has been violated. In a harrowing moment, Erika (Lia Drinda) receives a slap from her father and responds with a wounded smile to the camera-one of several instances of breaking the fourth wall, forcing the audience into complicity with silence.

Sound & Music: The Pulse of a Cursed Farm The sound design-buzzing flies, rustling leaves, howling wind-creates an immersive atmosphere. The film's recurring motif, the "sound of falling"-akin to the needle of a gramophone hitting the record-resonates ominously throughout. Michael Fiedler and Eike Hosenfeld's score, a fusion of ominous silence and mournful strings, intensifies the looming dread. Anna von Hausswolff's song "Stranger", with its haunting lyrics ("Something moves against me..."), becomes the anthem of the film's generations.

Themes: German History Through the Lens of Lost Women Schilinski marginalizes explicit political discourse-World War II, the Berlin Wall, and the reunification of Germany remain mere backdrops-focusing instead on bodies inscribed with history. Forced sterilizations, amputations to escape war, and the hidden violence within families form an intergenerational chain of suffering. Even in the age of iPhones and supposed freedoms, Lenka and her friend Nelly (Zoë Bayer) wrestle with fantasies of death-as if tragedy is embedded in the soil of this farm.

Weakness? Intentional Heaviness With a runtime of 149 minutes, this film tests patience. Some dreamlike sequences (such as the bicycle fishing scene) may seem dragged out to audiences expecting a fast-moving plot. Yet this slow rhythm mirrors the suffocating weight experienced by the characters.

Final Thoughts: Cinema That Burns Into the Skin The Sound of Falling feels like discovering a box of decaying photographs in an attic-seemingly unrelated images that suddenly form a cohesive narrative. Schilinski proves that cinema can still venture into the depths of humanity's untold stories. Though brutal at times (self-harm, assault, child deaths), none of its scenes feel gratuitous-each moment builds a monument to sacrificed femininity.

This film is a canvas of a hundred years of silence-and the scream that finally erupts from the soil. Perhaps that's why its ending carries not despair, but a faint glimmer of resilience: Lenka jumps into a river that was once the border between East and West, as if initiating the cleansing of centuries of wounds.

There exists a new form of asceticism in cinema, one that practices not restraint, but excess. It drowns the viewer in a deluge of stimuli, hoping the excess of form might conceal the vacuity of its content. One leaves the cinema not with a thought or a feeling, but with a kind of physical exhaustion, as if one had just undertaken an arduous journey without remembering its destination. "Looking into the Sun" is the gleaming, feverish manifesto of this new school, a film presented to its audience as an ordeal.

It is precisely in its strongest moments that the film reveals its decisive weakness. It is, as the benevolent cineaste would call it, a profoundly sensory experience. One does not go to this film; one enters it. You feel the shimmering ozone before a summer thunderstorm, the scratch of a woolen sweater on bare skin, the cool oblivion in the water of a lake. It is a cinematic barefoot path, leading us over shards of beauty, through the mire of repressed memories, and across the moss of comforting moments. The camera clings to surfaces, it breathes textures, it renders sight an almost haptic affair. In these moments, the film is magnificent because it desires nothing more than to place us in a state, a pure, unmediated presence.

Yet this state is fleeting, and what remains is the suffocating pretension with which each of these moments is charged. "Looking into the Sun" is a film so enamored with its own artistry that it forgets to possess a soul. Every shot is a painting, to be sure, but one that arrives already furnished with its own catalog text and art-historical classification. In every pan, in every deliberately unconventional composition, one feels the trembling index finger of the director, whispering in our ear: "Behold, how profound. Feel, how authentic." This intrusive staging of the significant suffocates any possible genuine sentiment at its inception. What was intended as meditation curdles into a pose.

Thus, the work meanders through associative sequences of images that adhere more to a curated Instagram feed than to any dramaturgical necessity. It is a fever dream, yes, but not the authentic kind that befalls us in delirium, revealing truths inaccessible to the conscious mind. It is the contrived, the artificially induced intoxication, in which one can still feel the breath of the pharmacist on one's neck. The images cry out for interpretation but are, in the end, merely empty ciphers basking in the reflection of their own supposed profundity.

In the end, we are left with the paradox of a film that wants us to feel everything, yet leaves us strangely untouched. One has felt the sun, but perceived no warmth. One has seen the pain, but felt no compassion. On this barefoot path, one has indeed felt every stone, but the destination was merely another meticulously lit dead end. "Looking into the Sun" wants to teach us how to see, yet is itself blind to the simple truth that art is born not of intention, but of becoming. A brilliantly photographed, yet ultimately hollow monument to its own ambition.

In die Sonne schauen is one of the most powerful German films in years. Mascha Schilinski weaves together four decades of women's lives in a nonlinear, dreamlike mosaic where memories, bodies, and experiences merge into something that transcends generations. With breathtaking visuals and extraordinary performances, the film is dark, poetic, and deeply moving. It lingers long after the credits roll.