A farmhouse in Saxony. The lives of four women who have lived there in different periods are somehow connected: Alma, a seven-year-old girl before the First World War; Erika, a young woman during the Second World War; Angelika, a restless young woman eager to explore life in the 1980s when the area was part of East Germany; and Nelly, who moves to the farmhouse with her family in the present day after growing up in the city. Is there a link between these four women beyond the fact that they once inhabited the same place? At times we seem to get close to an answer, but then drift away from it entirely. Sound of Falling is not a film that follows a conventional narrative structure, nor does it concern itself with the logic of cause-and-effect. Instead, sounds and images from different time periods intertwine, carrying us from one woman’s story to another’s.

In her second feature, director Mascha Schilinski looks at a century of German history and its most pivotal moments through the stories of women. These stories may not be connected in the classical sense, but what unites them is the shared experience of being a woman across time.