Bitter Harvest: On Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling”

In Mascha Schilinski’s Cannes Jury Prize–winning Sound of Falling (2025), a large stone farmhouse in the Altmark region of Germany witnesses the lives—and the suffering—of four young girls growing up in four distinct eras of modern history. For Alma (Hanna Heckt), Erika (Lea Drinda), Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky), and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), the walls of this family farm contain (and even perpetuate) all manner of secrets and discoveries: the death of a grandparent, the hobbling of a brother, the incestuous abuse perpetrated first by one uncle, and then another.