Les échos du passé

I had been genuinely looking forward to this film, as the core concept seemed so promising-and a Palme d'Or from Cannes has never let me down over the decades. Until now. This film, however, is unbearably pretentious and painfully slow, packed with hollow assertions that pile up in what feel like endless repetitions. At first, I switched to double speed, hoping for a shift in tone, rhythm, or substance. The next day, I tried starting over. No luck: not a single compelling human interaction in two and a half hours, just intrusive morbidity in every scene.

Then there are those self-important camera movements, paired with ominous soundscapes or abrupt silences, only to dissolve into aimless editing-cuts that seem to lack any forethought about where they're supposed to lead. It might impress some, but to me, it felt amateurish, and repetition only made it worse.

Otherwise, the film fixates obsessively on the body, suicide, mutilation, rural stupor, brickwork, Trabants, men and pigs-all strung together as if they were somehow equivalent. A dash of Tin Drum navel-gazing erotica and a sprinkle of fin-de-siècle Freudian hysteria-is this supposed to be a "female perspective" on things I'm failing to grasp? I sincerely hope not. Thankfully, there were recent films like Toni Erdmann, The Substance, Anatomy of a Fall, ...

It remains a complete mystery to me why this film is so celebrated and showered with awards-though, on closer inspection, the praise seems to hinge on a single phrase repeated ad nauseam: "the intergenerational perpetuation of trauma." Well, I had to write this review just to process the trauma of watching it. :)

.. it's not fully understandable, it's not a Heimatfilm and even not a german historical movie at all. It's about the tragedies of female comming of age stories over one century, broken in little pieces, arranged into a huge Hieronymus Bosch-like kaleidoskop picture. The only constant is the narrow space of a four-side yard whereas the same subjects shown from different temporal angles.

That's what only film can do. No other medium.

For some time now, German-language cinema has seen films that could be called "Magical Heimatfilms," in reference to the "Magical Realism" of Latin American literature (with Nobel Prize winners Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa as its most important representatives). The Heimatfilm (and certainly the mountain film) was once a genuinely German-language genre and extremely popular with cinema audiences, for example, in the 1950s. However, the old Heimatfilms, such as Schwarzwaldmädel (Black Forest Girl) (1950) and Grün ist die Heide (1951), were also considered kitschy and deceitful and have been almost completely forgotten in the decades that followed. Today's "magical Heimatfilms" are characterized by magical elements of the inexplicable, but also by a realism that relentlessly exposes the cruelties and darkness of life in the homeland. Examples of this reorientation of the HEIMATFILM genre include "Some day we will tell each other everything" (BERLINALE 2023: nominated for the Golden Bear) and THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (VENICE 2023: nominated for the Golden Lion), as well as more accessible works such as MITTAGSSTUNDE (2022) and WAS MAN VON HIER AUS SEHEN KANNN (2022). The recently released film AMRUM (2025) by GOLDEN GLOBE winner Fatih AKIN also fits well into this series.

With SOUND OF FALLING / IN DIE SONNE SCHAUEN by Mascha SCHILINSKI, such a magical Heimatfilm has now also become an award-worthy (Jury Prize) genre entry at the Cannes Film Festival. This alone can be considered a sensational development. But does the film even deserve this honor?

Set on a farm somewhere in the Brandenburg countryside, four stories from four different eras (from the 1910s to the present) are artfully interwoven. The focus is primarily on female characters, whose relationship to one another is unclear. An atmosphere of oppression and sensuality is conjured up through evocative imagery. The audience learns much about the difficult living conditions on the farm and the often cruel entanglements between people. In the 1910s, Low German (Plattdeutsch) was still spoken, and people were cruelly and thoughtlessly mutilated or even posed as dead for family photos. An archaic world, however, that continued even during the Nazi and GDR eras. People suffered horrific accidents or voluntarily took their lives. Interspersed throughout are images of the nearby river and the eels swimming in it, which must have often fed on the watery corpses of history. A cruel world, one that is, however, repeatedly challenged by moments of lust for life and love.

Mascha Schilinski has succeeded in creating a truly remarkable and award-worthy film, one that doesn't aim to tell the audience a coherent story, but rather goes all out to give us, the viewers, a sense of the circumstances from which we have emerged. From Cannes, this film has embarked on a worldwide triumph that will surely bring a few surprises. It's also remarkable, however, that this isn't actually a feature film, but rather a television film from the ZDF editorial team DAS KLEINE FERNSEHSPIEL (THE LITTLE TV PLAY). It was the Cannes Film Festival organizers who first recognized the cinematic potential of this story and brought it to the grand stage on the French Mediterranean. That, too, is remarkable!

As someone originally from rural Germany, perhaps I can relate more deeply to the harshness of life in earlier centuries - and that may be why I found this film to be a true masterpiece. Some critics even call it a once in a century German movie.

My wife, however, felt what I suspect most viewers will: What is the director trying to tell me? Why are all the characters so unaesthetic, so unsympathetic?

But that's precisely the point - it's meant to confront you with everything about life itself.

This is not an easy film. It's mainly about death, yet in revealing death, it uncovers the truth of life.

It's quiet, but brutal.

Its images are sometimes distorted, yet the mind remains on high alert throughout.

It's philosophical, yet raw.

It's like nothing you've ever seen before - moral, but without seeing all men as evil.

In die Sonne schauen is one of the most powerful German films in years. Mascha Schilinski weaves together four decades of women's lives in a nonlinear, dreamlike mosaic where memories, bodies, and experiences merge into something that transcends generations. With breathtaking visuals and extraordinary performances, the film is dark, poetic, and deeply moving. It lingers long after the credits roll.