PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW! The Soundman is a picture that never begs for attention, never shouts its themes, and never underestimates its audience. Directed with sensitivity, fairy-tale quality, and restraint by Frank Van Passel, who also wrote this romantic historical drama that explores themes of melancholy, fantasy, and unease. It’s the kind of film that feels discovered, that transports you into a world the way film should, even for those who don’t like subtitles.
The story opens with a countdown: May 5, 1940, which was five days before the German invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands. Both countries still cling to the belief in neutrality, even as Jewish refugee children fleeing Nazi Germany are being sent back across borders. Against this chilling backdrop, Van Passel frames a deeply human dilemma faced by Belgian Jews: stay in a homeland that may no longer protect them or flee into the unknown of South America.
At the center of the picture is Elza (Femke Vanhove), a young Jewish woman whose dream is to perform on stage like her late mother. For now, she sings in radio commercials for chocolate, hoping to climb the ladder perhaps into the beloved radio dramas that provide Belgian audiences with a brief daily escape from life’s troubles. During one of her studio wanderings, Eliza meets Berre (Jeffe Hellemans), a shy but gifted sound-effects guy, or as he likes to say, a Foley prodigy. Each, initially trapped in their own inner worlds, slowly warms to the other as the country’s political and moral climate deteriorates.
Sound is not merely a profession in The Soundman; it becomes a worldview. Berre experiences reality through rhythm, texture, and echo, and Van Passel smartly aligns the audience with this perspective. Foley becomes a memory preserve, even to the point of immortalizing people. Radio becomes a refuge. Voices become both fragile and dangerous. In a time when identities can be erased overnight, and people disappear.
“During one of her studio wanderings, Eliza meets Berre, a shy but gifted sound-effects guy, or as he likes to say, a Foley prodigy.”
Circling the central couple is a vivid ensemble of characters, each representing part of Belgian society under pressure. Polak (Koen de Bouw), the seasoned tormented Foley artist who mentors Berre, is confronted with moral compromises he refuses to accept, choosing freedom at the ultimate cost. Radio star Fons Belloy (Peter Van den Begin), a “swaggering Casanova” on air, reveals and revels in his antisemitism as circumstances allow ugliness to surface unchecked. Meanwhile, history advances relentlessly in the background: King Leopold III switches sides, institutions falter, and citizens yield, capitulate, or are mobilized.
With The Soundman, Van Passel wisely uses the prism of a love story to recount the national history of a small country facing overwhelming forces. The tone moves between moral fable and fantasy, punctuated by surreal touches that momentarily lift the story out of realism like a wonderfully staged dance sequence in the Flagey building. That magnificent building itself becomes a fairy-tale fortress. The Art Deco, modernist look recalls images of another fortress from Austrian Edgar Ulmer’s pre-code film The Black Cat. The design represents rupture from the past, which is about to happen with the invasion. The building is all hard lines, polished surfaces, glass, steel, and symmetry, populated by people turning against each other and hiding secrets.
Berre’s sonic inner world is at times softened by an overabundance of score. Some stylistic choices feel gently dated, as if the film is deliberately resisting cinematic urgency with some blatant CGI that enforces the fairytale theme on the level of the look of The Polar Express. Berre gets reduced to brooding looks into the camera, even as Elza’s family and life are disintegrating. Yet the performances all work, particularly Vanhove’s. Her brilliant turn carries the film with crushing innocence forced into action. A Jewish girl dressing like German-born Marlene Dietrich in trousers becomes a small act of rebellion. Hellemans is intense, which works well for the role and narrative.
Ultimately, The Soundman is a superb fable grounded in history. It doesn’t aim to overwhelm, but to resonate moments of romance, choice, courage, and the surreal that do not feel out of place even in the nightmare world of aggression that is to come.
The Soundman screened at the 2026 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
"…a superb fable grounded in history."
