32 Sounds

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32 Sounds

2023

1h 38m

Documentary

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

96%

Tomatometer

26 Reviews

88%

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground) featuring original music by JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN). The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. Join Oscar-nominated filmmaker Green as he takes the audience on a journey through time and space -- exploring everything from forgotten childhood memories, to the soundtrack of resistance, to subaquatic symphonies -- and experience in new ways the astonishing sounds of our everyday lives. 32 Sounds investigates the mysterious nature of perception and the subtle yet radical politics that arise from sensation and being present in one's body.

Lindsay Zoladz

New York Times

11/20/2023

A relentlessly curious documentary...

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Mick LaSalle

San Francisco Chronicle

11/20/2023

A remarkable documentary and something you’ll never forget.

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Robert Abele

Los Angeles Times

11/20/2023

Since I’d readily “listen”-watch them all, that tells you 32 Sounds and I are very much on the same wavelength about appreciating its subject...

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Will Mavity

Next Best Picture

01/29/2024

6/10

There are far more riveting and better-made documentaries this year to be seen, but there are few more interesting ones than this to listen to.

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Dennis Harvey

48 Hills

07/31/2023

Amid the gamut of artfully assembled archival footage, interviews, animation, and hard science, we get some great trivia...

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Charles Solomon

FilmWeek (LAist)

06/06/2023

I was very interested in the subject of this film... But it just doesn't go anywhere. It's just throwing things at the wall and hoping they stick.

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Steven B

01/14/2024

an amazing meditation on sound and what it means to be human

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Charles W

@RT64500228 01/04/2025

As they remark in the movie, sound often seems subservient and overlooked in movies, docs and social media, and yet if you subtract it, a whole gamut of emotions are gone. Moreover taking sound in isolation, or for its specific purpose, as in this documentary, you ‘hear in focus’ . The tradegy of the doomed male bird before extinction, the poignancy of archive voices, the clever foley artists job. Worth a listen, put your earphones on, and close your eyes as instructed.

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Sam Green

Director

Sam Green

Narrator

Sam Green

Screenwriter

Josh Penn

Producer

Thomas O. Kriegsmann

Producer

Jenifer Westphal

Executive Producer

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Synopsis

32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground) featuring original music by JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN). The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. Join Oscar-nominated filmmaker Green as he takes the audience on a journey through time and space -- exploring everything from forgotten childhood memories, to the soundtrack of resistance, to subaquatic symphonies -- and experience in new ways the astonishing sounds of our everyday lives. 32 Sounds investigates the mysterious nature of perception and the subtle yet radical politics that arise from sensation and being present in one's body.

Director: Sam Green
Producer: Josh Penn, Thomas O. Kriegsmann
Screenwriter: Sam Green
Distributor: Abramorama
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 28, 2023, Limited
Runtime: 1h 38m