Sound of Falling (2025)
Directed by Mascha Schilinski
Four adolescent girls each spend their youth in the same farmhouse over the last century. Though separated by decades, resonances between their lives emerge: their desires and distress, secrets and truths, encounters with another’s gaze and defiant gaze in return.
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37 films that influenced Sound of Falling
What critics say influenced Sound of Falling
Director
Michael Haneke
Critics invoke Haneke by name, and compare Sound of Falling to 2 of Haneke’s films.
Visuals
On Haneke, rather than any one film
It rather feels like watching four Michael Haneke features at once, with the expected tragedies that ensue.
Sound of Falling will inevitably be compared to The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke’s portrait of the birth of the resentments that would lead to World War II, told from the point of view of a village in the late 1910s.
The severity of Alma’s agrarian 1910s existence evokes Michel Haneke’s The White Ribbon…
Schilinski’s Sound of Falling feels spiritually connected to Sabrina Mertens’s Time of Moulting and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, all three reaching for similar perspectives on how the national traumas throughout German history play out in the personal traumas of German families and communities.
…the rigidity of human darkness found in Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon is a good reference point)…
…invoking a forced audience engagement resembling Claire Denis (“White Material”) and Michael Haneke (“Amour”)…
Director
Sofia Coppola
Critics invoke Coppola by name, and compare Sound of Falling to 1 of Coppola’s films.
Themes
On Coppola, rather than any one film
There can be comparisons made to Sofia Coppola’s exploration of female existence…
…comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides or Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock are extremely tempting, but not quite on the mark…
…its tone and subject matter are much closer to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides. Like Coppola’s film, Sound of Falling embodies a dreamlike melancholy, with each girl drawn to the idea of death in a way that’s both curious and contemplative.
…its coming-of-age focus will undoubtedly draw comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides…
…it has become a recurring theme explored by films as disparate as Robert Zemeckis’ Here, Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. Of those films, the film Sound of Falling shares the most with is, surprisingly, Here, which treats the camera as an unseen witness to the lives lived in a place…
Where a film such as Robert Zemeckis’ Here approaches a similar conceit with a trite wash of sentimentality and a cinematic gimmick, Sound of Falling opts for ambition and total trust in its audience…
“Sound of Falling” is exactly what Robert Zemeckis’ “Here” (2024) was trying to be. In both films, the camera is the eye, as we are the invisible visitors/observers watching different generations of people inhabiting a single space over periods of time.
The way the film remains anchored to the same house through the decades calls to mind Robert Zemeckis’ Here…
…comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides or Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock are extremely tempting, but not quite on the mark…
…all contribute to a dreamlike atmosphere reminiscent of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock…
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On Tarkovsky, rather than any one film
In a perfect mix of Klimov and Tarkovsky…
…a modern-day echo of the works of Bergman and Tarkovsky…
…many of these ordinary, albeit accurate, observations were articulated far more compellingly in Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking.”
“Falling” could also serve as a companion piece to Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” (2022), another gutsy, detail-oriented chronicle that zooms in close, holding that gaze on the shared and individual wounds of girls and women.
To be clear, “Sound of Falling” is no “Nickel Boys” or “Chronology of Water” which invented a new way of using camera perspective to tell a story.
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Critics invoke Bergman by name, and compare Sound of Falling to 3 of Bergman’s films.
Visuals
On Bergman, rather than any one film
…a modern-day echo of the works of Bergman and Tarkovsky…
Like Persona or Cries and Whispers before it, this is a movie that moves at its own pace, engaging with hypnotic imagery and broad, even nebulous ideas.
Like Persona or Cries and Whispers before it, this is a movie that moves at its own pace, engaging with hypnotic imagery and broad, even nebulous ideas.
Schilinski’s eerie film is like “Fanny and Alexander” (1982) crossed with the darkest detours from David Lynch or Lynne Ramsay.
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…its depiction of the desire of girls to mimic both what they covet and what they don’t understand is perhaps most similar to Robert Altman’s off-kilter, dreamy exploration of womanhood, 3 Women…
Director
David Lynch
Critics invoke Lynch by name, and compare Sound of Falling to 1 of Lynch’s films.
Music
On Lynch, rather than any one film
…the sound of a buzzing fly floats above the Lynchian, droning sound design…
In fact, the entire first act reminded me of Lynch’s “Eraserhead” (1977).