In die Sonne schauen

Critics in Germany were almost hysterically announcing this film as THE new exceptional Movie Event. That should have made me more suspicious before its official start. But my expectations were high, probably much too high. I simply can't agree on the enthusiastic hype which follows this movie.

I found it irritatingly overlong, too repetitive and what annoyed me the most, it's aestheticism stands too dominant in the forground and suffocates any believable content, storyline or relation between the actresses and their characters. Instead Schilinski confronts our patience with an endless atmospheric associative stream of consciousness through four generations of women, and nothing more to tell than 100 years of their suffering. Pain, grief, sorrow, suicide, abuse.

And by the way: 100 years of german history and not a single Nazi in sight. I just wonder.

Seriously? For my taste a ridiculous overload of wokeness, which causes the contrary effect to the intended sensitivity.

Not that I wouldn't respect her efforts, but for said reasons her characters left me extremely cold, i felt excluded and even bored most of the time. A major disappointment.

Bertold Brecht said: a picture of the Krupp steel plant says nothing about the Krupp steel plant.

This pretentious piece of vanity is an overload of pictures and sounds, but it's hollow inside. It transports nothing than its own nothingness camouflaged as importance - with an exclamation mark. I am important! I am art !

But it isn't. Art isn't about barfing out all that comes to your mind. Or filming all that happens. It's about choosing, about selecting, about extracting. Extracting truth. About experiencing something, and then expressing it in the form of art you chose. I don't have the feeling that in this movie anything was felt and expressed by the authors and makers. They more like scientists, inspect, watch and depict animals in a laboratory. Staying neutral and detached.

There is no truth in this, as noise has no truth. You can't even make up your own truth, as your head is full of noise, no space or time for fantasising something up.

You leave the cinema with a headache and a desire to barf it all out again.

Three months later, I can remember maybe one or two scenes of the movie, and not a single emotion. The rest has anhiliated itself.

I saw the movie in Cannes. Very unusual and interesting images. Meditative. I fell asleep twice. So it's really good for relaxing.

I missed the last hour though. I left. It was juat. So endlessly repetitive.

I didn't understand what it was all about. But maybe it's more of a movie for women. By women for women. The men are crippled or dead or sex monsters or lying there sick. Pigs grunt. The men grunt like pigs. Most have mustaches.

The women are all suffering somehow but you don't really understand why. Nobody laughs except the kids. A colorless world. Very enigmatic. Like a modern painting but unfortunately without impact.

There is hardly any conflict either. To say something, to have a point of view: how old-fashioned. Nothing more than a few catalog slogans.

It was edited very cryptically, so that it passes for art. I had no idea which era was being shown and who was who and from whom. Really, I had no clue. I think it would be great for a 30-minute video installation.

But as a 2.5 hour movie? Hard to bear.

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.