BFF25: History of Sound Special Presentation

Enjoy a G&T or mocktail on arrival before the Australian premiere of this elegiac romance starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor.

Luna Leederville
Arrivals: 6:15 pm
Film start: 6:30 pm

Luna on SX
Arrivals: 7:15 pm
Film start: 7:30 pm

Windsor Cinema
Arrivals: 5:45 pm
Film start: 6:00 pm

Australian premiere

Paul Mescal and Britain’s Josh O’Connor deliver luminous performances in this sweeping, elegiac romance set against the backdrop of early twentieth-century America. Adapted from Ben Shattuck’s celebrated short story, the film follows Lionel (Mescal), a gifted farm-boy with synesthesia (a phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers), and David (O’Connor), a fellow music student he meets at the New England Conservatory in 1917. Their connection deepens through a shared devotion to folk music, yet the onset of World War I pulls them apart with David sent to the front lines and Lionel back to Kentucky.

Reunited after the war, the pair embark on a journey through rural Maine, capturing voices and songs on fragile wax cylinders, preserving a vanishing cultural heritage even as their own lives diverge.

Crafted with breathtaking restraint, Oliver Hermanus’ film of quiet textures and haunting silences, sees landscapes echo memory and sound itself becomes a vessel of longing. The History of Sound is both an intimate love story and cultural elegy, a tender meditation on music, memory, and the ways love endures through loss.

OFFICIAL SELECTION | Cannes Film Festival 2025