Sound of Falling

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 REVIEW!  Sound of Falling is the epic tale of four girls and their families, all inhabitants of the same farmhouse in Germany, but at different points in time spread over a century. Alma (Hanna Heckt) is from the early 1900s, Erika (Lea Drinda) is from the 1940s, Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) is in the 1980s, and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) is in roughly the modern day.

We’re first introduced to Erika, who, it seems, is missing a leg, as she ignores the cries of her father to get her to tend to the pigs.  But we quickly learn that she’s emulating her uncle Fritz (Martin Rother), who she’s strangely fascinated with. When she finally heeds the call of her father, he smacks her in the face. This sets the tone for the kind of brutality that these women will have to endure through the decades.

“Alma at first has a heartbreaking innocence, which will soon be destroyed by her austere, cult-like family and neighbors.”

We jump back in time to Alma, a nine-year-old playing a prank on a maid with her sisters. As the maid steps into her nailed-down shoes, she trips, introducing one of the many times that falling will echo through the film. Alma at first has a heartbreaking innocence, which will soon be destroyed by her austere, cult-like family and neighbors. Death seems to be around the corner at every turn, sometimes captured in elaborate rituals including ghastly photographs of the recently deceased. When there isn’t death, there is maiming, both internally and externally, and we come to find out Fritz lost his leg, and how some of the women are sterilized to be “made safe for men” and sold off like slaves.

Sound of Falling jumps between time periods seemingly haphazardly, often accompanied by a whoosh, as if we ourselves are falling forwards or backwards in time. In the 1980s, we encounter Angelika, who is related to the past in ways that are not at first obvious. She’s coming of age sexually, which includes some awkward encounters with her cousin Rainer (Florian Geißelmann). Meanwhile, she’s being sexually abused by her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst). In the final, modern timeline, Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) is dealing with teenage angst, and more, which include a growing friendship and even infatuation with a neighbor girl, and noticing how men are starting to perceive her in a sexual way.