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.

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​

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