Sound of Falling
MUBI | Release Date: January 16, 2026 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
90
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 26 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMar 4, 2026
Sound of Falling asks a fair bit of audiences. It provides great rewards for those who oblige. Read full review
100
Time OutDavid HughesFeb 18, 2026
It’s a cliché to say that a film will stay with you long after you leave the cinema. This one could haunt you to the grave. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesTim GriersonJan 23, 2026
Such questions are central to this elusive marvel, which invites the viewer to complete the drawing that Schilinski evocatively sketches. Read full review
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyJan 13, 2026
A bravura example of an endangered species: the unapologetically enigmatic, visionary European art film. Read full review
100
The TimesKevin MaherMay 16, 2025
Schilinski is in such control of every frame, every cut, prop and camera move that it’s often breathtaking just to witness the emergence of this grandly interlaced tapestry of grief. Read full review
100
ObserverSiddhant AdlakhaMay 16, 2025
By focusing on characters who can seldom put words to their experiences—whether the ravages of war and trauma, the jealousies of adolescence, or the desire to simply no longer exist—Sound of Falling marvelously tells a century’s worth of women’s stories by weaving together the psychological, the physical, and even the spiritual, resulting in a dramatic tour de force of mind, body, and soul. Read full review
100
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 16, 2025
What’s certain is that Sound Of Falling, the striking second feature from German director Mascha Schilinski, is a work of thrilling ambition realised by an assured directorial vision. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 16, 2025
No finer point of craft, performance or poetic nuance has been rushed or neglected in a film that ultimately sounds a warning against the dimming or blunting or de-specification of memory — not just for oneself, but for communities or lineages with more shared stories than they might think, but an inclination to clam up and carry on. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 16, 2025
Schilinski doesn’t spare us all their pain and suffering, nor does she hide the joy and wonder they sometimes experience. Her brave girls carry their forebearers within them from one generation to the next, surging toward the future both damaged and victorious. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 16, 2025
It’s an astonishing work, twining together the lives of four generations of families with an intricacy and intimacy that feels like an act of psychic transmission. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 16, 2025
These girls can only see so much of themselves on their own, but Sound of Falling so vividly renders the blank space between them that it comes to feel like a lucid window into the stuff of our world that only the movies could ever hope to show us. Read full review
91
The Film StageZhuo-Ning SuMay 16, 2025
This highly experimental, deeply unsettling tale about the fates of women and their echoes down history plays like a psychosexual fever dream of epic scope. While it will confound and upset plenty, hardcore cinephiles can mark this down as their next film to obsess over. It’s quite a feast. Read full review
90
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJan 21, 2026
In just her second feature, Schilinski creates a true art-house epic, haunting and lyrical. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithJan 16, 2026
The attraction is in the haunting texture of the picture, its delicate, breathy wonder. Read full review
90
The New YorkerJustin ChangNov 21, 2025
The Berlin-born director Mascha Schilinski, who wrote the screenplay with Louise Peter, is a bit of a prankster herself. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a filmmaker wield the tools of her craft with such an ingenious and committed sense of mischief. Read full review
88
The Travers TakePeter TraversJan 17, 2026
One thing is for sure about this century-spanning story about the dangers faced by young women trying to negotiate a safe space in a world of men—you’ll never forget it. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyJan 16, 2026
Sound of Falling operates like a ghost story, complete with a haunted house, but the ghosts aren’t supernatural. The ghost is history. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownSep 15, 2025
The past comes off in Mascha Schilinski’s film as an onerous, if unseen, weight on the present. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePat BrownSep 14, 2025
The past comes off in Mascha Schilinski’s film as an onerous, if unseen, weight on the present. Read full review
83
The PlaylistElena LazicMay 16, 2025
For all its sprawling ambition, Schilinski’s sophomore feature is most effective and moving on a human scale. A dissociative film, it recreates the febrile sensation of a mind splintered by too many painful truths, which continue to linger in the body long after they’ve vanished from memory. Read full review
80
The New York TimesNatalia WinkelmanJan 15, 2026
Here is a movie whose atavistic excursion through time transfixes, even as its psychology remains as fuzzy as a photograph smeared by motion. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 16, 2025
It is dense with fear and sadness. Read full review
70
The RevealScott TobiasJan 16, 2026
It can be a bit of a slog, frankly, but Schilinski’s command over the look and feel of the film, from the evocative Academy-format images to the unnerving rumble of the soundtrack, sinks into your bones. The more it shimmers with uncanny horror, the better. Read full review
70
IONCINEMA.comNicholas BellNov 13, 2025
Hypnotic and transfixing, it’s a film experience demanding marination, only bothering to explain itself in stops and starts, like an amnesiac slowly puzzling together constantly shuffled memories. Read full review
60
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannMay 16, 2025
I imagine that Sound of Falling will reward repeat viewings. There's almost too much to take in upon first glance, decades of life condensed into two and a half hours. Schilinski's vision is so confident and so bracing that it's hard not to be arrested by what's happening onscreen, even if you're not sure what's going on. Read full review
50
ColliderEmma KielyMay 16, 2025
The Sound of Falling may be one of the most grim films on the female experience you’ll ever see, but it never rises above this darkness to deliver anything illuminating about being a woman. Read full review
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