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German producers Katharina Bergfeld and Heino Deckert of ma.ja.de. Fiction, co-producers of Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet, won the third annual €100,000 CineCoPro award at this year’s Munich International Fim Festival (Miff), presented by Bavarian regional fund Fff Bayern with support from the Bavarian State Chancellery.

The dark tragicomedy premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in May where it won the jury award.

Ma.je,de coproduced what is Soto’s second feature with his Colombian outfit Ocúltimo, and Sweden’s Momento Films.

“Equitable and eye-level collaborations across continents are possible and urgently needed,...

Gold Derby's top news stories for May 22, 2025.

Mubi acquires Cannes breakout Sound of Falling

Mubi acquired German drama Sound of Falling, the biggest unanticipated breakout of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, for distribution in multiple territories including North America. The film hails from director Mascha Schilinski and follows four girls, Alma (Hanna Heckt), Erika (Lea Drinda), Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky), and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), who each grow up on the same farm in northern Germany at different times. "As the home evolves over a century, echoes of the past linger in its walls," according to the synopsis. "Though separated by time, their lives begin to mirror each other." Release plans will be announced at a later date.

Watch the trailer for Netflix's family crime drama The Waterfront

Netflix released the trailer for The Waterfront, a juicy-looking family crime drama from creator Kevin Williamson. The series stars Holt McCallany, Maria Bello, Melissa Benoist,...

German director Mascha Schilinski’s second feature, Sound of Falling (In Die Sonne Schauen), has been acquired by Mubi for North America, UK, Ireland, India, and Turkey.

The pick up follows a bidding war after a world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, according to the film’s producer. And Mubi has been on a streak at Cannes, picking up rights in select markets to The Secret Agent, from writer and director Kleber Mendonça Filho, Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s latest feature film, and Jennifer Lawrence-Robert Pattinson starrer Die My Love for $24 million.

Last year, Mubi had picked up The Substance at Cannes, prepping the title for what would go on to be an Oscar run for Coralie Fargeat’s body horror thriller.

“Mubi is an oasis for everyone who loves cinema. Here arthouse classics stand shoulder to shoulder with new exciting cinema as well as...

A hushed press conference at Cannes turned into a standing ovation this morning when German director Mascha Schilinski introduced her second feature, Sound of Falling. The film follows four young women—Alma, Erika, Angelika and Lenka—each living on the same rural farm during the 1910s, 1940s, 1980s and today. Their stories ripple through unspoken wounds that span generations.

Schilinski and co-writer Louise Peter discovered a photograph of three 1920s farmworkers whose gaze conveyed quiet sorrow. “We felt the melancholy they carried,” Schilinski explained. “That image led us to imagine what history left behind in that house.” The screenplay tracks how small tragedies—a discarded spoon, a whisper in an empty room—can shape descendants’ lives.

Festival critics hailed the film as a Palme d’Or contender after a three-and-a-half-minute ovation at its Grand Lumière debut. Guy Lodge of Variety praised its “astonishing ambition,” while IndieWire’s David Ehrlich called it “mesmerizing.

Despite a small turnout by press this morning for the first feature press conference of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, journos in the room gave Sound of Falling filmmaker Mascha Schilinski and cast thunderous applause.

The wonder in Cannes is the titles we never see coming, which mushroom into must-haves for distribs, not to mention the entry of a fresh cinematic voice on the global stage.

The German movie follows four girls during four different time periods — the 1910s, 1940s, 1980s and present day. The entire movie takes place on a German farm, and these young women’s lives are interconnected through time, space and generational trauma.

When it came to the inspiration for the movie, which Deadline’s Damon Wise calls “an all-timer,” Schilinski and co-writer Louise Peter came across a photo of three women from the 1920s.

“It was a very modern photo. We got the impression these...

Sound of Falling, the second feature from 41-year-old German filmmaker Mascha Schilinski, had its world premiere on Wednesday afternoon at the Grand Théâtre Lumière as part of the Cannes Film Festival, where it is playing in competition, and was greeted with a four-minute standing ovation.

Co-written with Louise Peter, the German-language drama follows four girls — Alma (Hanna Heckt), Erika (Lea Drinda), Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) — who live, at different points over the course of a century, on the same farm in northern Germany.

Originally titled The Doctor Says I’ll Be Alright, But I’m Feelin’ Blue, the two-and-a-half hour film is the product of a 34-day shoot. It is still seeking U.S. distribution, and interest in it amongst top-tier distributors is said to be strong.

The Hollywood Reporter’s review raves that Sound of Falling “resembles nothing you’ve quite seen before, making you question...

Some Cannes Film Festivals take days to get going in terms of critical hits. Not this year.

We told you a while ago about the buzz for Mascha Schilinski’s Competition film Sound of Falling. We told you in February that it was a surprise likely entry for Competition, despite Schilinski being relatively unknown. Then we told you last month that mK2 had stumped up a large amount to secure the film. There has to be a good reason if Cannes has programmed a film from a relatively unknown filmmaker on Day 2.

The film has just had its debut in Cannes, and the reviews are glowing. It sounds like a very live Palme d’Or contender already. You can check out our review here. Our critic Damon Wise says: “Cinema is too small a word for what this sprawling yet intimate epic achieves in its ethereal, unnerving brilliance; forget Cannes,...

As if to quell any lingering gripes about an opening film that could be generously described as wafer-thin, organizers from this year’s Cannes Film Festival kicked off the Palme d’Or competition with a film of profuse (and maddening) complexity. Free-flowing and leaden, novelistic and allusive, dour and flowery, Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling” can take just about any adjective you want to dish, layering them all into a time-hopping mood board that follows four families, all living in the same German farmhouse over the course of a century.

Any attempt to diagram the kin links and plot turns that connect the four clans would give you a maze, which is just as well for a defiantly nonlinear uber-artfilm expressly designed as a labyrinth full of flourishes and dead-ends. Suffice it to say, “Sound of Falling” actively nurtures comparisons to “The Virgin Suicides” in tenor and tone – but only sometimes,...

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.

And yet, coming of age in the German Democratic Republic of the 1980s,...

One is the loneliest number in Mascha Schilinski’s superb second feature, a fractured reflection on childhood and family that eschews linear narrative for immersive atmosphere, telling the story of four young girls from different eras whose lives play out, in the words of Harry Nilsson, by making rhymes of yesterday. Cinema is too small a word for what this sprawling yet intimate epic achieves in its ethereal, unnerving brilliance; forget Cannes, forget the Competition, forget the whole year, even — Sound of Falling is an all-timer.

The one constant in a kaleidoscopic timeline that plays out across a hundred years is a farmhouse in northern Germany, established in the opening scenes — perhaps in the ’30s or ’40s — as home to Erika (Lea Drinda), who amuses herself by binding her left leg and walking on her Uncle Fritz’s crutches. Fritz, an amputee, is largely bedbound and suffers night terrors, a...

It’s not every day you see a movie that resembles nothing you’ve quite seen before, making you question the very notion of what a movie can be. And yet German director Mascha Schilinski’s bold second feature, Sound of Falling (In Die Sonne Schauen), is just that: a transfixing chronicle in which the lives of four girls are fused into one long cinematic tone poem, hopping between different epochs without warning, painting a portrait of budding womanhood and rural strife through the ages.

The closest thing that comes to mind is probably Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, although this is Malick by way of Jane Campion and Michael Haneke, shifting between fleeting coming-of-age moments and scenes of resolute darkness and human cruelty. At two and a half hours, and without an easily discernible narrative throughline, Sound of Falling is arthouse filmmaking with a capital A that...

"If I command my heart to stop, it would stop." Neue Visionen Filmverleih in Germany has revealed the first look trailer for the highly anticipated German film titled Sound of Falling in English (or In die Sonne schauen in German), made by German filmmaker Mascha Schilinski. The film will be premiering tomorrow at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Main Competition, a major debut for this little German film. It was supposed to premiere at Berlinale, but Cannes snatched it instead giving it a much more grand premiere. This epic story is set across four different times spanning decades. Four girls: Alma, Erika, Angelika, and Lenka, 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. Though separated by time, their lives begin to mirror each other. The film is "a grand tour into...

Exclusive: mk2 Films has boarded international sales rights to Cannes Competition entry Sound of Falling, the anticipated sophomore feature from German filmmaker Mascha Schilinski.

We told you back in February that this German-language film was in the running for a Cannes Competition slot and the buzz has been strong. We hear that Anatomy Of A Fall outfit mk2 put down a significant Mg to secure the movie.

The synopsis reads: “Over the course of a century, as four girls from different time periods experience their youth on a German farm, their lives become intertwined until time seems to dissolve.” Above is a first-look image.

“We were simply blown away when we saw Sound of Falling. Mascha Schilinski’s vision is so bold and visceral, this signals the arrival of an exceptional new voice in cinema,” said Fionnuala Jamison of MK2 films.

Related: Cannes Competition: Aster, Trier, Dardennes, Reichardt, Ducournau & Wes Anderson...

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The Devil’s Hour is a British supernatural thriller drama series created by Tom Moran. The Prime Video series follows Lucy, a social worker who mysteriously wakes up every night at exactly 3:33 am in the middle of the so-called devil’s hour and after having some terrifying visions she soon finds herself connected to a series of brutal murders in the area. The Devil’s Hour stars Jessica Raine, Peter Capaldi, Nikesh Patel, Alex Ferns, Meera Syal, Barbara Marten, Phil Dunster, Benjamin Chivers, and Brandon Bendell. So, if you loved the thrilling mystery, complex story, and compelling characters in The Devil’s Hour here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Shining Girls (Apple TV+) Credit – Apple TV+

Shining Girls is a psychological thriller drama series created by Silka Luisa. Based on the 2013 novel The Shining Girls by author Lauren Beukes,...

Kirsten Niehuus, head of German film fund Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, is confident that the changes to film funding proposed by the German government recently will have a “very positive effect on the production scene in Berlin-Brandenburg.”

The proposed changes to the funding system were presented last week to German lawmakers in the Bundestag by commissioner for culture and media Claudia Roth (see here).

Kirsten Niehuus, Martin Moszkowicz

Speaking to Variety Saturday at a party Medienboard hosted at Berlin’s Holzmarkt, Niehuus said the changes “will mean that we would have a tax system in place that could compete, for instance, with Budapest or Prague, so that not so many German productions would go and shoot somewhere else, and more foreign productions would come and shoot in Germany.”

Looking at the media landscape across Germany she notes that one major challenge is the decision by high-end outlets such as Paramount+, HBO and Sky to cancel local productions,...

The German festival posted its biggest ever audience in 2023.

Filmfest Hamburg came to a close on October 7 with an awards ceremony that saw the Cicae’s arthouse cinema award presented to UK filmmaker Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut How To Have Sex which premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in May

The cash prize €5,000 is provided by Hamburg’s local film fund Moin to be spent on the film’s PR campaign by its German distributor capelight pictures which will release the film in German cinemas on December 7.

The €5,000 Ndr young talent award, sponsored by local public broadcaster Ndr,...

Fest focus on films by up-and-coming talent from Geman-speaking world.

Max Gleschinski’s Alaska won the top prize in the feature film competition at this year’s Filmfestival Max Ophüls, which was held in Saarbrücken on the German-French border from January 23-29.

Focusing on works by up-and-coming talent from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg, the festival is considered the most important newcomer film festival in the German-speaking world.

Rostock-based Gleschinski’s second feature centres on a 40-something woman who slowly finds her way back into life after nursing her father for 20 years, and falls in love with another woman.

The...

Exclusive: German Films, the agency that promotes German cinema globally, has unveiled the seven participants for the eighth edition of its annual Face to Face campaign, which include talents who have worked on projects ranging from Berlin Alexanderplatz to David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future to Amazon Prime Video hit We Children of Bahnhof Zoo.

This year’s edition, which is dubbed Face to Face with German Films – The Filmmakers, will showcase seven filmmakers who have made a lasting impact on the German film industry with their creative and artistic work. The initiative is considered a prominent platform for showcasing German talent to the international film and television worlds.

The participants this year are: screenwriter Sönke Anderson, who has worked on projects such as 2019 Grimme Award winner Familie Lotzmann Auf Den Barrikaden and upcoming opera film Orphea In Love; actor Welket Bungué, who has appeared in Berlin Alexanderplatz, Body...

Nominated for a Generation14 Plus Crystal Bear and Teddy for Best Feature Film at the 2020 Berlinale, Leonie Krippendorff’s queer coming-of-age drama Cocoon is now finally arriving this June in a release perfectly timed to Pride Month. Ahead of its June 17 digital debut from Film Movement, we’re pleased to exclusive release the first U.S. trailer which displays a stylish, intimate look at blooming young love.

In the multicultural microcosm of her noisy Berlin neighborhood, there are many firsts for 14-year-old Nora (Lena Urzendowsky) during one particularly hot summer. She gets her period, smokes marijuana, discovers her love for other girls and meets the wild Romy (Jella Haase). With her, the noisy area of Kreuzberg suddenly seems endlessly large and full of hidden beauty. While the heat sticks to her skin, Nora loses her heart to her wild new friend and learns to stand up for herself. And when summer ends,...

Munich-based Neuesuper, one of the rising values on Germany’s ebullient new TV scene, is teaming with Ard Degeto to develop “Breitscheidplatz,” a drama-thriller that depicts the build-up to Berlin’s 2016 Christmas market truck attack which left 12 dead.

The series, however, will buck trends, presenting not a matter-of-fact rehashing of the events leading up to the attack, but rather a fictional interpretation of what might have happened, turning on two German policemen working at a time when Europe had suffered a blitz of attacks, attempting to prevent a similar outrage in Germany.

“One of the huge questions poised by the attack is how on earth it could have happened, how did the security forces come to make such mistakes?” said Simon Amberger, one of the producers for Neuesuper.

A six-part series commissioned for Ard Degeto by Carolin Haasis, “Breitscheidplatz” tries to deliver an answer. Picturing the daily work of the...

Leonie Krippendorff’s teenage drama picked up for the US, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Benelux.

German sales outfit M-Appeal has closed a raft of deals across Europe and in North America and Brazil on Leonie Krippendorff’s teenage drama Cocoon.

The coming-of-age story, which received its world premiere in the Generation section of the Berlinale in 2020, will be released in the US by Film Movement.

European deals have also been secured in Spain (Barton Films), Denmark (Angel Distribution), Sweden (Filmcentrum Distribution) and Benelux (Cinemien). Cinemien is planning a theatrical release in late summer 2021.

Olhar Distribuição will release in Brazil, beginning with six theatres in August,...

Leonie Krippendorff’s teenage drama picked up for the US, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Benelux.

German sales outfit M-Appeal has closed a raft of deals across Europe and in North America on Leonie Krippendorff’s teenage drama Cocoon.

The coming-of-age story, which received its world premiere in the Generation section of the Berlinale in 2020, will be released in the US by Film Movement.

European deals have also been secured in Spain (Barton Films), Denmark (Angel Distribution), Sweden (Filmcentrum Distribution) and Benelux (Cinemien). Cinemien is planning a theatrical release in late summer 2021.

The film marks the second feature of Germany’s...

The acting in Leonie Krippendorff’s tale of sexual awakening is outstanding, as a girl comes out during a hot Berlin summer

This is nothing to do with Ron Howard’s movie about Don Ameche being rejuvenated by aliens. German director Leonie Krippendorff has created a coming-of-age awakening in the 2018 summer of love, with swimming-pool rapture, yearning bedroom reveries and rooftop party scenes in the Kotti Kreuzberg, Berlin’s Kottbusser Tor district. There are also some noodling YA-style video-journaling inserts, which are an acquired taste. It’s a bit derivative and the metaphor in the title is right on the nose – but Cocoon is also seductive and well-acted.

Fourteen-year-old Nora (Lena Urzendowsky) nerdishly keeps caterpillars in jars in her bedroom, the sort of childish hobby that many people of her age have junked in favour of Instagram. She hangs out with her older sister Jule (Lena Klenke) and Jule’s...

"Imagine if it were like that with everything that's beautiful. One minute it's there. And then it's gone." Peccadillo Pics in the UK has released a UK trailer for the German coming-of-age / sexual awakening drama Cocoon, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Kreuzberg is Nora's microcosm. The silent observer, she's always tagging along: at parties, at school, at the pool, on rooftops. Nora drifts around the monotonous housing blocks with her big sister and her friends... But Nora has her own way of looking at the world, and when she meets Romy, she realizes why. There is music in the air, Nora's body is changing, and caterpillars are spinning cocoons. A "true depiction of the trials and triumphs of female adolescence, Cocoon is a raw and honest coming-of-age tale that every woman can relate to." The film features Lena Urzendowsky, Jella Haase, and Lena Klenke. Looks like a very vibrant,...

Netflix has commissioned a third season of How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast), which the streamer has confirmed is its most-watched German original series.

The show, which follows two teenagers who inadvertently become large scale drug dealers, is also popular in Italy, France, Brazil, the service said.

Created by Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann, the series first premiered in May 2019 and its second season debuted last week on July 21.

Käßbohrer and Murmann will return as showrunners for s3 with Arne Feldhusen returning to direct. Maximilian Mundt (Moritz), Danilo Kamperidis (Lenny), Damian Hardung (Dan), Lena Klenke (Lisa) and Lena Urzendowsky are all returning as key cast members, with Langston Uibel a new addition. S3 is set to go into production in and around Cologne.

Final titles revealed for the Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus strands.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has revealed the final raft of titles that will comprise its Generation strand and confirmed that 58% of the features and shorts in the youth section are directed by women.

Scroll down for full list of titles

It follows a recent announcement that more than 50% of the films in the official project selection of the Berlinale Co-Production Market are from female directors.

The 43rd edition of Berlin’s Generation sidebar will comprise 59 competition entries from 34 countries, including 29 world premieres.

After revealing 20 films in the strand last month,...

The Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its Generations sidebar lineup, consisting of 59 children and youth films, with 58 percent of the titles, both feature-length and short films, directed by women.

Berlin organizers recently also said that the festival's co-production market, where producers look for partners to finance their new projects, will feature more than 50 percent female-directed films for the first time in its 17-year history.

Leonie Krippendorff’s female coming-of-age tale Cocoon, starring German actresses Lena Urzendowsky and Jella Haase, will open Generation's 14plus competition section. H Is for Happiness, John Sheedy's adaptation of the Barry ...

The Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its Generations sidebar lineup, consisting of 59 children and youth films, with 58 percent of the titles, both feature-length and short films, directed by women.

Berlin organizers recently also said that the festival's co-production market, where producers look for partners to finance their new projects, will feature more than 50 percent female-directed films for the first time in its 17-year history.

Leonie Krippendorff’s female coming-of-age tale Cocoon, starring German actresses Lena Urzendowsky and Jella Haase, will open Generation's 14plus competition section. H Is for Happiness, John Sheedy's adaptation of the Barry ...

Sales agent M-Appeal has picked up Leonie Krippendorff’s lesbian love story “Cocoon,” which world premieres in the Generation section of the Berlin Film Festival.

Krippendorff’s debut fiction feature, set in Berlin’s multicultural Kreuzberg neighborhood, follows Nora, a shy 14-year-old girl as she makes her way into adulthood: she falls in love with another girl, learns to stand up for herself, and gets her heart broken for the first time.

The cast includes Jella Haase, one of the stars of hit comedy “Fack Ju Göhte” and Burhan Qurbani’s “Alexanderplatz,” Lena Klenke, star of Netflix series “How to Sell Drugs Online,” Lena Urzendowsky and Elina Vildanova. The film is produced by Jost Hering Filme.

Berlin native Krippendorff studied directing at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Konrad Wolf. Her graduation film “Looping” was nominated for numerous national and international film awards and received several awards. In 2018 Krippendorff took...

Constantin Television and Amazon Studios have revealed the lead cast – and have released the first photo of them on location – for their coproduction “We Children From Bahnhof Zoo.” The high-end series, inspired by the 1978 non-fiction book about teenage drug users in Berlin that was previously adapted as the shocking 1981 film “Christiane F.,” is being distributed internationally by Fremantle.

The series presents “a picture of the drugs and club scene in Berlin” that is “provocative” and “controversial,” according to a statement from the producers.

The Bahnhof Zoo clique at the heart of the show will be played by Jana McKinnon (Christiane), Michelangelo Fortuzzi (Benno), Lena Urzendowsky (Stella), Bruno Alexander (Michi), Jeremias Meyer (Axel) and Lea Drinda (Babsi).

As previously reported, Philipp Kadelbach is directing the eight-episode series. His credits include “Generation War,” about a group of young German friends going through World War II, BBC series “SS-gb,” based on Len Deighton’s novel,...