Darius Marder, the director of the film Sound of Metal, is on the latest episode of The Backstory podcast to discuss the film and its sound design with host Jason Bentley and fellow guest Ludwig Göransson, composer of the scores to Black Panther, Tenet, and The Mandalorian. You can hear their conversation below.

"Early accolades for sound design, and rightly so," Bentley says of Sound of Metal. "The use of sound in this film is a powerful tool to support the storytelling. Darius wrote the screenplay with his brother Abraham, who also contributed music, and whose song 'Green' for the film has been shortlisted for an Oscar nomination."

You can hear Abraham Marder's "Green" here.

In Sound of Metal, during a series of adrenaline-fueled one-night gigs, itinerant punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) begins to experience intermittent hearing loss. When a specialist tells him his condition will rapidly worsen, he thinks his music career—and with it his life—is over. His bandmate and girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) checks the recovering heroin addict into a secluded sober house for the deaf in hopes it will prevent a relapse and help him learn to adapt to his new situation. But after being welcomed into a community that accepts him just as he is, Ruben has to choose between his equilibrium and the drive to reclaim the life he once knew. Utilizing startling, innovative sound design techniques, director Darius Marder takes audiences inside Ruben’s experience to vividly recreate his journey into a rarely examined world.