In its last days of an extended run, I finally got to catch the other two films of Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) World Cinema 2026: Bi Gan’s Resurrection, a Chinese-French co-production, and The Sound of Falling of Mascha Schilinski, from Germany. While you’d be hard-pressed to find two more different films, there are also shared narrative devices between the two, and that’s why I’ve compressed them in one review. You have until the middle of this week to catch all four films of this wonderful FDCP initiative.

A scene from 'Resurrection.'

The two films play across different epochs, making them episodic and constantly turning our heads and minds inside out in the process. They both exhibit masterful control of the material by the director, stunning visual design, and cinematography. While Resurrection is tinged with stylized world-building and impressive artifice, Sound of Falling is deceptively naturalistic, using a single farmhouse as the setting for stories that unfold over a century. 

Resurrection is set in a SciFi future where we're dreaming has been left by the wayside, in the name of life longevity. We follow a woman (the still luminous Shu Qi) who encounters and cares for an Android (Jackson Yee), and lets him relive 100 years in his dreams

These dreams are presented in six chapters, each corresponding to one of the six senses recognized in Buddhist thought. So there’s sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind. The android is called a Deliriant. Both Yee and Qi take on several characters and personas, and it’s Bi Gan’s singular vision that has led audiences to seek out this film and appreciate its detailed, stylized epochs.

One can drop in at any point in the film and be enthralled by the imagery. As for the rather opaque narrative, it would be all sound and fury, signifying nothing. It’s the changes in visual styles that astound and turn the film into a rewarding spectacle. What one will make out of the film is left to anyone’s subjective interpretation - and perhaps that’s the slyest of cards that Bi Gan is dealing with.

The Sound of Falling is essentially a feminine manifesto of a film. In strong, lengthy episodes, we’re treated to the stories of four women and what happened to them on one remote German farm. United by trauma, we slowly peel away the gestures, conversations, and vignettes to uncover the truth of these women and girls. 

Poised and ambitious, the film is like a fine wine that one has to be in the mood for to properly savor and appreciate. There’s an epic quality to the narrative structure, and there is sorrow and despair that are painfully depicted in the course of the four stories. 

Female suicide, incest, and sexual assault are just three of the themes tackled in the film, and if anything, as this is only Schilinski's second feature film, it heralds the arrival of a new major female talent in German and world cinema. 

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to catch the four very different films that form the line-up of FDCP’s World Cinema 2026.