Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor headline a period romance that trades big speeches for glances, songs and the ache of timing. If you like your cinema tender, handsome and a little haunted, this one should be on your radar.
Film details
- Premiere date: 2 April 2026
- Director: Oliver Hermanus
- Runtime: 128 minutes
- Language: English, with Dutch subtitles
- Age rating: 12
- Genre: Drama, history, romance
- Starring: Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Chris Cooper
- Seen in Rotterdam at: KINO, Cinerama, LantarenVenster
In 1917, gifted music student Lionel meets fellow student David at the Boston conservatory, and their shared love of folk music sparks a bond that will shape Lionel’s life. Years later, a letter from David leads to an impromptu journey through the Maine wilderness to collect old songs, bringing love, memory and longing to the surface.
What’s the vibe?
This is a soft-spoken, beautifully dressed period drama with a queer love story at its heart. The mood looks closer to a quiet campfire confession than a sweeping Hollywood melodrama: misty landscapes, old recordings, restrained performances, and that particular kind of yearning that seems to belong to another century.
There is also something very tactile about it. Songs are collected, voices are preserved, and physical media matters. That gives the film a slightly dusty, intimate texture, as if it has been stored away in a box for years and only now opened again. KINO describes it as a film about love, longing and the importance of physical media, which feels exactly right. (KINO)
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Trailer
Check out the trailer below.
Why you might like it
- Eyes: muted New England landscapes, handsome period detail and a painterly look that critics have repeatedly praised.
- Heart: a romance built on missed moments, memory and emotional restraint rather than grand declarations.
- Mind: it is also about preservation, folk culture and what gets saved when people try to hold on to voices, songs and the past.
Critical reception
Critical response has landed in the favourable-to-solidly-positive zone. On Rotten Tomatoes, The History of Sound sits at 70% from 138 reviews, with the site’s critics consensus praising its visual beauty and performances even while noting that its pacing and familiar shape may test some viewers.
On Metacritic, the film has a 64 Metascore based on 32 critic reviews, which also points to generally favourable notices. Reviews there range from enthusiastic praise for its sadness and sensitivity to more mixed takes that admire the mood while finding it a little too contemplative.
The film also arrived with festival pedigree. It screened In Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, which immediately put it in serious arthouse company.
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Scene to watch for
Keep an eye on the early stretches in which Lionel and David move from musical connection to something deeper. This looks like the kind of film where the emotional charge sits in the pauses, the listening, and the sense that two people already know they are standing inside a memory before it is even over.
Recommended pairing
Go for a simple pre-film dinner that suits the mood: a bowl of soup, rustic bread, something slow-cooked, and a glass of red if that is your thing. Afterwards, this is a good one for a quiet walk by the water, or for heading home and putting on an old record instead of doom-scrolling your way into the night.
Need-to-knows
One nice detail is that the film’s love story is tied directly to music collecting. The journey through Maine is not just a backdrop for romance, but part of a wider attempt to preserve traditional songs for the future. Cannes also lists the film at 127 minutes, while Dutch cinema listings in Rotterdam mostly list it at 128 or 129 minutes, so do not be surprised if runtimes vary by a minute depending on the source.
Also, this is very much a film for people who do not mind a measured pace. The rewards seem to come from atmosphere, performance and emotional aftertaste rather than plot fireworks. So yes, bring patience. It sounds like the film will pay you back for it.
