Cannes 2025 Is Only A Day Old
But Already Has Its First Raved About Movie… Let The Bidding Wars Begin For Mascha Schilinski’s ‘Sound Of Falling’

By Andreas Wiseman, Deadline
May 14, 2025

Some Cannes Film Festivals take days to get going in terms of critical hits. Not this year.

“We were simply blown away when we saw Sound of Falling. Mascha Schilinski’s vision is so bold and visceral, this signals the arrival of an exceptional new voice in cinema,” MK2 told us last month.

We told you a while ago about the buzz for Mascha Schilinski‘s Competition film Sound of Falling. We told you in February that it was a surprise likely entry for Competition, despite Schilinski being relatively unknown. Then we told you last month that mK2 had stumped up a large amount to secure the film. There has to be a good reason if Cannes has programmed a film from a relatively unknown filmmaker on Day 2.


'Sound of Falling' Fabian Gamper/Studio Zentral

The film has just had its debut in Cannes, and the reviews are glowing. It sounds like a very live Palme d’Or contender already. You can check out our review here. Our critic Damon Wise says: “Cinema is too small a word for what this sprawling yet intimate epic achieves in its ethereal, unnerving brilliance; forget Cannes, forget the Competition, forget the whole year, even — Sound of Falling is an all-timer.”

Variety called it an “astonishingly poised and ambitious second feature,” while THR called it “a movie that resembles nothing you’ve quite seen before, making you question the very notion of what a movie can be. … Schilinski’s bold second feature is just that: a transfixing chronicle.” A Vulture headline beamed: “We May Have Already Seen the Best Film at Cannes This Year,” while Indiewire calls it a “mesmerizing stunner.”

Now there is a scrum among buyers to get the film. Most territories remain open. The market screening tomorrow is set to be very well attended, we hear, with studio execs in attendance who wouldn’t normally show up. MK2 has world rights and we probably won’t have to wait long for some splashy deals on the movie. The question is, how arthouse studios are prepared to go? Those buyers who bought the movie very early are feeling very good about themselves. There will also likely be a scrum among U.S. and UK agents and managers looking to sign up the German filmmaker.

The synopsis reads: “Over the course of a century, as four girls from different time periods experience their youth on a German farm, their lives become intertwined until time seems to dissolve.”

“We were simply blown away when we saw Sound of Falling. Mascha Schilinski’s vision is so bold and visceral, this signals the arrival of an exceptional new voice in cinema,” MK2 told us last month.

The film, which was once known as The Doctor Says I’ll Be Alright, But I’m Feelin’ Blue — a title Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux said he was a fan of — features Luise Heyer, Lena Urzendowsky, Susanne Wuest and Lea Drinder among cast. The filmmaker made her debut in 2017 with Dark Blue Girl.

You can read our interview with Schilinski here.

Co-written by Schilinski and Louise Peter, the film is produced by Studio Zentral (Maren Schmitt, Lucas Schmidt, and Lasse Scharpen) with ZDF/Das Kleine Fernsehspiel (Burkhard Althoff and Melvina Kotios) and with support from Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM), Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM), and Deutscher Filmförderfonds (DFFF).