The blurry photo that holds a century of women's stories

Published 2 months ago • 1 min read

Near the end of Sound of Falling (the film I discuss on this week's Seventh Row Podcast), Angelika (the blurry figure in the photograph below) poses uncomfortably for a family photo in the 1980s before disappearing.

How we read this photo — and what it means that she's blurry in it — is something we can only construct from the film's form:

How this image evokes ones we've seen before in the film's 1914, 1940s, and present-day timelines. And how the scenes leading up to this — not just plot per se, but the images we see — prime us to read it.

Still from Sound of Falling. Angelika is the blurry figure on the right.

The film is at least as much about how the story is told — through sound, recurring images, and gestures — as it is about the plot and dialogue.

And that's part of what makes it one of my top 5 films of 2025, and the 2nd best film I saw out of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

(The first was Sentimental Value. Neither won the Palme, but that won second place, and Sound of Falling won third!)

Sound of Falling is the second feature from German writer-director Mascha Schilinski, and it's a hugely ambitious — telling many interconnected stories across a century — and deeply rewarding film that more than earns its 2.5-hour runtime.

The last hour is where it delivers payoff after payoff, rather than, like too many films, feeling like a great big slog.

Today on the podcast, I dig into what makes Sound of Falling so remarkable, how it invites us to read its form to unpack meaning (and how it works on us subconsciously even before we do).

And then I talk to director Mascha Schilinski about making the film.

Tune in on your favourite player to hear me (and Mascha Schilinski) talk about:

✨ How the film primes us to read this very photograph — and why it matters

✨ How Schilinski uses voiceover and multiple points of view to create a collective portrait of women's experiences across generations in the same farmhouse (yep, it's Gothic, too!)

✨ Why the film is called the Sound of Falling — Schilinski discusses the image of 'falling' and the sound design

✨ What studying Joachim Trier's films taught me about unlocking the film’s emotional impact

👉 Listen to the episode

A quick thing to try

You might be wondering what it's actually like to step into The Deep Focus. So here's a little taste. The first thing I always do is point you to a moment worth looking at. Below is one from the beginning of Sentimental Value. Take a sec to see what you spot in the image. Everything counts — even (and especially) the obvious. You might have noticed: ✨ We're looking through a window (which takes up most of the frame). ✨ We're watching someone through glass. ✨ Someone is leaving. ✨ It's a...

12 days ago • 1 min read

Join me in April?

I’m running something new in April. It’s called The Deep Focus. We’ll spend three weeks with two films by Joachim Trier — Oslo, August 31st and Sentimental Value — following how they’re put together. We'll look at specific moments, trace patterns within and across the films, and see how those choices shape what you feel. If you’ve ever felt a scene hit — and weren't quite sure why — this is a space to stay with that question long enough to find an answer. I won’t tell you what to think.But I...

15 days ago • 1 min read

When a scene hits—but you can't explain why

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Bill Hader, the SNL star-turned-writer-director, on the Team Deakins podcast. He was talking about rewatching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, hitting a moment that felt like an emotional gut punch — and literally pausing the film to ask:“Why did that hit me?!” That kind of moment — where something lands harder than you expect —and you feel something strongly before you know why… You’ve probably had that, too. Even Hader — who thinks about directing...

16 days ago • 1 min read