WRIF Preview Screening: The History of Sound @ the HOP

For Valentine’s day, join us for a White River Indie Festival 2026 Preview Screening event with our friends at the Hopkins Center! In The History of Sound, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor play early 20th-century music students in this heartfelt, understated romance that spans decades and continents.

While growing up in rural Kentucky at the turn of the 19th century, Lionel (Mescal) demonstrates a profound gift for music that leads him to a scholarship at the Boston Conservatory of Music. There, he meets the upper-class, polished David (O’Connor) through their shared passion for folk ballads. World War I separates them, but they reunite for an idyllic musicological field trip through rural New England, listening to and recording local people singing their homemade compositions.

Director Oliver Hermanus (Living) creates an intoxicating, nostalgic period atmosphere, with folk songs, augmented subtly by Oliver Coates’s score. Mescal and O’Connor are two of the best actors alive right now, and they make this beguiling, hearttugging romance as believable as it is beautiful.

D: Oliver Hermanus, US, 2025, 2h7m

Tickets: buy on the Hop website.*

*WRIF Passholders will gain entry for free! Buy passes here.

For a full schedule, tickets, film guide, and other information, visit the WRIF Homepage.