Echoes of the Past: a fascinating labyrinth (review)

A fresco on traumatic memory, from the 1910s to the present day, constructed in flashbacks and flashforwards, in a horror film atmosphere. The Cannes Jury Prize is worth giving in to.

Jury Prize at Cannes, Echoes of the Past is the type of film that we love or reject thanks to its director’s bias to trust the spectators, to let them get lost and then wander at their leisure in the painstaking work that she carried out over the course of her three years of writing, following the thread of her feelings within the framework in which she circumscribed her story. A German farm, in which we will follow – in flashbacks and flashforwards – the destiny of four young girls who lived there at four different periods, from the 1910s to the present day, each suffering incessant physical and moral violence. So much for context. And from there, Echoes of the Past unfolds as a journey as fascinating as it is uncomfortable. As if Mascha Schilinski had opened a Pandora’s box and suddenly everything that these mistreated young women had been forced to keep quiet emerged.

The opposite would have been to make it a linear and academic story, taking care to knit each story well. Mascha Schilinski embraces this pent-up rage which is finally released by going in all directions. We feel her in search of new modalities in cinematographic narration. In writing of course but also through incredible work on sound and image, full-fledged characters in the film. And it is this atmosphere that carries you away provided that you have agreed to make a pact with the film. That of being totally lost in the first 30 minutes and not necessarily any further in the following 2 hours. Chick?

Of Mascha Schilinski. With Hanna Heckt, Lena Urzendowsky, Laeni Geiseler… Duration 2h29. Released January 7, 2026