Film Review: The SoundMan

Palm Springs International Film Festival

By Valerie Milano

Palm Springs, CA (The Hollywood Times) 1/2/26 – At the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where cinematic craftsmanship is not only appreciated but deeply understood, The Sound Man arrives as a rare and resonant experience, one that invites audiences not simply to watch, but to listen.

Directed by Belgian filmmaker Frank Van Passel, The Sound Man (also known as Radio Man in Belgium) is set in the tense days just before World War II. While the story is fictional, it is meticulously grounded in historical truth, inspired by real people and events in Belgium. Van Passel’s personal connection to the material, discovering that his close friend’s grandfather was Belgium’s first Foley artist, gives the film an authenticity that hums beneath every frame.

What immediately distinguishes The Sound Man is its bold inversion of cinematic language. Rather than treating sound as a supporting element to image, Van Passel builds the film from sound outward. His protagonist, a young man beginning work at a radio station in 1940, experiences the world primarily through hearing rather than speech. As Van Passel explained during our Zoom interview, the director asked himself: What does the world look like when you hear it instead of see it?

The result is a visually poetic and emotionally immersive film, where Brussels is rendered not as a literal cityscape but as a sensory memory, shaped by sound, silence, and imagination. Old matte-painting techniques and stylized interiors reflect the character’s inner world, while exterior shots are used sparingly, reinforcing a sense of intimacy and isolation.

Van Passel collaborated with some of Europe’s most respected sound designers, who spent over a year crafting the film’s sonic landscape. Every footstep, breath, radio hum, and silence carries emotional weight. The soundtrack is not merely heard; it is felt.

One of the film’s most daring moments, a love scene that dissolves into a luminous green sound wave, was a creative risk that could have felt abstract or indulgent on paper. On screen, however, it becomes a striking visual metaphor for emotional connection, placing the audience exactly where the characters are: inside sound itself.

Beyond its technical brilliance, The Sound Man is a deeply human film. It explores isolation, intimacy, and the ways people communicate beyond words. Van Passel notes that some viewers have returned to the film a second time, even closing their eyes during certain sequences to experience it purely through sound, a remarkable compliment to the film’s sensory power.

Perhaps most affecting is the film’s underlying message of hope. By revisiting the fears and uncertainties faced by previous generations on the brink of war, Van Passel offers a quiet but urgent reminder: even in the darkest moments, love, beauty, and tenderness endure. In a world that often feels uncomfortably close to repeating history, The Sound Man insists on hope as both resistance and necessity.

The Sound Man is not a film that rushes to explain itself. It asks for patience, presence, and attention, qualities richly rewarded by its emotional depth and artistic ambition. For Palm Springs audiences known for their appreciation of craft, this film is a standout: meditative, innovative, and profoundly moving.

As I finished watching the screener, I found myself doing exactly what Van Passel hopes audiences will do, listening more closely to the world around me. That lingering awareness may be the film’s greatest achievement.

Enjoy our conversation: