Director: Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Molly Price, Alison Bartlett, Michael Schantz
The History of Sound is a 2025 British-American drama film directed by Oliver Hermanus, tracing the lifelong bond between two young men who meet at a music conservatory in early twentieth-century America and spend decades collecting the folk songs of a vanishing rural world.
What is The history Of Grand Thef Auto about?
At the Boston Conservatory in 1917, Lionel and David discover a shared passion for the unrecorded folk music drifting through New England's countryside. What begins as an intellectual friendship deepens into something more intimate as the two set out on an ambitious fieldwork journey through remote corners of Maine, capturing the voices and melodies of ordinary people whose music history might otherwise forget. Spanning years and separations shaped by war and circumstance, the film follows how that original journey echoes through both men's lives — what was preserved, what was lost, and what memory does to the things we love most.
Cast & crew
South African director Oliver Hermanus, known for his nuanced character work, guides a cast anchored by Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor, whose chemistry forms the emotional spine of the film. Chris Cooper appears in a supporting role, and the ensemble includes Molly Price, Alison Bartlett, and Hadley Robinson, all grounding the period drama in lived authenticity.
Context & significance
For Persian-speaking viewers and the Iranian diaspora, The History of Sound offers something rare: a quiet, literary American drama that centres music as cultural memory rather than spectacle. Iranians have a profound relationship with the idea that songs carry what written history cannot — the grief, the longing, the specific texture of a place or era. This film's meditation on preservation, loss, and the way two people can define each other's entire sense of the world resonates deeply with diaspora experience. The film is available in its original English audio without Persian dubbing or subtitles.
Where & how to watch
The History of Sound is available to stream on K-Time. Watch on the web browser, your TV, or your phone — no VPN needed, no extra download, no geo-blocking. Start and cancel anytime.