Berberian Sound Studio

Directed by: Peter Strickland

2013 | UK | 92 minutes | Unrated

A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art.

Watching the unsettling Berberian Sound Studio, you become very aware of noises. A scream seems to rip the film in two; a whisper curdles your blood. Set in a schlocky Italian postproduction studio in 1976, it concerns a sound engineer hired to create the mix for a horror film. He is quickly intimidated by the strangeness of the place and shadowy lights and harsh voices. Writer-director Peter Strickland intriguingly weaves in a movie-within-a-movie that we barely see, but we hear. And he makes his film an homage to the art of creating sounds. Knives slash into watermelons; the ominous tap of high-heeled footsteps echos in a hallway. And finally, silenzio falls: the most terrifying sound of all.” - Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times. 

Winner 11 International Film Festival Awards, 2012/2013