Maria Schilinski

6.9 Dark Blue Girl (2017)
7.5 Sound of Falling (2025)

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Maria Schilinski (Germany, 1984) debuted with the psychological thriller Die Tochter/ The Daughter/ Dark Blue Girl (2017).

In die Sonne Schauen/ Looking into the Sun/ Sound of Falling (2025), co-written with Louise Peter and photographed by cinematographer Fabian Gamper,

From the costumes we can guess that the film begins before World War II. A young woman on crutches walks around the house while a man is calling an Erika to take care of the pigs. She removes a rope from her thigh and starts walking normally: she was just faking it. She brings the crutches to the bedroom where a one-legged man is sleeping: he is the one who walks with crutches, her uncle Fritz. She tastes his umbilical hair. He is actually awake but pretends not to feel her. Erika finally walks downstairs to the pigs and the man who has been calling her slaps her for being late. Erika turns and smiles at us.
From the costumes we guess that the film rewinds to the beginning of the century, before the adoption of electricity. Three girls of different ages nail a shoe to the threshold of a room. Then they hide to enjoy the scene of a woman, Berta, tripping over when trying to wear the shoes. But Berta pretends to be dead and scares them to death. The littlest of the three girls, Alma, spies from a keyhole her mother, dressed in black, lighting candles and lining up photographs like in a mysterious ritual (shown from the door so it looks like a vertical TikTok video). Then she throws up. She then watches as a maid, Trudi, washes the one-legged man, Fritz, lying on the bed. It's "All Souls Day" and the whole family queues up to pay respect to the dead in the room where the candles have been lit up. The family gathers in the dining room and prays (shown from the door, which makes it look like a framed painting). During dinner Alma becomes the narrating voice. She tells us of her mother's illness and introduces the cripple Hedda. We see a flashback to the death of a little boy. Later, Alma and her sisters stare at the pictures on the dresser, which also include a child called Alma like her. The sisters enjoy making fun of Alma. We don't fully understand what is going on because little Alma doesn’t understand.

An electric lamp signals that we moved forward in time. A young couple, Christa and Hannes, with two small daughters lives in an apartment. They watch a little girl who lives next door and whose mother died. Then the woman pulls out the husband's penis and puts it against her face. Later, we see the woman demolish the old furniture of Alma's time.

It's the 1980s and that part of Germany has become East Germany, a communist state. The farmhouse has been split into apartment units. Inside one of the apartments we meet the teenager Angelika, her middle-aged mother Irm, her uncle Uwe, and her cousin Rainer. We see that Uwe is touching Angelika's thigh unseen by Irm. He is also Angelika's swimming coach. The narrating voice shifts to Angelika. She dances sexy in front of Rainer and three children, staring at herself in the mirror. Angelika tells us that her mother Irm never laughed. Irm is Erika's sister, and Irm remembers that Erika used to steal her uncle Fritz's crutches. Angelika is therefore Erika's niece, and Erika is her aunt.

We move to the age of the smartphone. Blurred shots of a hand-held camera show up a woman napping by a river: Christa. A little girl is swimming in the river: Nelly. The mother doesn't care about little Nelly. Nelly dreams of drowning in the river to make her mother pay attention. Kaya is a pretty girl who never smiles: she is the neighbor whose mother died. She becomes friend with Christa's daughter Lenka, Nelly's older sister.

The film rewinds to a century earlier, presumably when World War I had just broken out. Alma is helping granma in the kitchen and outside her father and her mother are fighting with Alma's older brother Fritz. He tries to climb away from them, falls and breaks his leg. That's how he became a cripple. Alma's narrating voice tells us that the family called it a "work accident". At night Fritz screams.

Back to the 1980s, we see Angelika slip naked in bed with her cousin Rainer, but he rejects her accusing her of being his father's lover and she then cries. Angelika is out in the fields helping her father who is driving a combine harvester. She dreams of killing herself under the wheels of the machine.

Back to Alma's story: Fritz is spared World War I because he is a cripple. Alma's mother is so sick she can't walk by herself. Alma sits next to a doll and pretends to be dead, simulating the picture of the dead Alma that the family keeps on the dresser. Alma's sisters can't find Alma when she hides on a tree and leave her there. Alma starts sobbing. They found her only in the evening and she had a high fever. Alma spies from a keyhole when maid Trudi masturbates the cripple Fritz. Alma's narrating voice informs us that Trudi was sterilized by the family to make it safe for the male servants of the house to rape her at will. The next narrating voice is from one of the sisters, who is dead, and tell us of the death of their great-grandmother. We are told the detailed preparations for the burial.

Angelika tells us that her mother Irm never spoke of how her sister Erika died, but Angelika learned it from grand-uncle Fritz. At the end of World War II Erika killed herself in the river like other women who were afraid of being raped by the invading Russians. (Erika was Alma's and Fritz's niece, and so is Irm).

Back to the present: Lenka and Kaya bond. Lenka is fascinated by the pensive Kaya, whose mother died of lung cancer. Lenka and Kaya dive in the river. Kaya doesn't resurface. Lenka freaks out, but it's just a bad joke.

Back to the 1980s and to Angelika's narrating voice: Angelika is more and more depressed.

Back to Alma's story. She eavesdropped as her much older and spinster sister Lia is "sold" as a maid to another farmer: obviously that's the fate of young women who don't find a husband.

Back to Angelika: she challenges Rainer in the barn to play with fire (literally). Later her father takes a picture of the extended family. Angelika lines up next to uncle Uwe. She jumps out of the photograph just when the father clicks, and so her image is blurred. Now it's Rainer's turn to narrate: Angelika disappeared after that picture and they never saw her again.

Back to Alma: Lia either died during the operation of sterilization or killed herself after that because her body is soon returned to the family and she is given the post-mortem treatment, which includes the photograph for the dresser. Alma learns to say that Lia's death was another "work accident".

Back to the present, Lenka narrates that Nelly climbed to the barn's threshing floor while playing with other children and we understand that she died jumping down. Then the camera simply shows that Lenka is increasingly obsessed with imitating Kaya.

A strong wind sweeps a corn field. The women crouch to shelter. But some of them start flying in the air.

We are never told how Christa (and therefore Lenka and Nelly) fit in the genealogy. We are left to wonder if Christa (young in the 2020s) is Angelika's daughter (a teenager in the 1980s), i.e. the missing generational link. Given that Kaya is most likely born in the new millennium, it's unlikely she is the daughter of Angelika (who would be in her late 30s or 40s in the new millennium). It also makes sense that Christa is Angelika's daughter because the "curse" of the family continues with Nelly (Christa's daughter), not with Kaya.