USA | UK | Sweden | Italy  2025
Opening April 9, 2026

Directed by: Oliver Hermanus
Writing credits: Ben Shattuck
Principal actors: Josh O’Connor, Paul Mescal, Chris Cooper

Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound is a heartbreaking portrait of love discovered and lost at a time when it was neither accepted nor understood. Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal deliver beautifully restrained performances as David White and Lionel Worthing, two men from vastly different backgrounds brought together by American folk music.

They first meet in 1917 as gifted music students at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, each drawn to the other: Lionel captivated by David’s gregariousness and joie de vivre, and David by Lionel’s quiet stoicism and naïveté. When World War I breaks out, David goes off to fight while Lionel returns to the Deep South, leaving their brief romance suspended in time.

After the war, they reunite and set out on a journey through rural Maine, traveling together to record the folk songs and stories of Americans using primitive recording technology. As they move through a world still fractured by war, their bond deepens in ways neither can fully articulate.

Ultimately, circumstances pull them apart. Lionel departs for Europe to pursue his passion for teaching music, left to wonder what became of David, whose silence lingers in the form of unanswered letters. Like Brokeback Mountain (2005), the film captures the devastation of love constrained by time and circumstances. Music becomes their refuge and the invisible thread that ties the two men together, even when distance and unspeakable tragedy take hold. (Erin H.)