Ángela would give her right arm to be a mother, but she is so afraid of what others might think. It’s not because any child of hers would be born out of wedlock. Nor is she a fallen woman, whom a conservative society would deem unfit to raise offspring. She’s deaf.
Such is the premise of the Spanish film Sorda (Deaf), which was judged best short film at this year’s Aswan Film Festival. Even the title is a spoiler.
Two Spanish directors have dared to bring physical disability to the silver screen again, even though deafness is unseen and has none of the ‘squirm’ factor of proteus syndrome in The Elephant Man (1981) or paraplegia in Breathe (2017).
Directors Eva Libertad and Nuria Muñoz, both from Murcia, told The Egyptian Mail of their film’s realism since the actress Míriam Garlo, who plays Ángela, is deaf. She is also Eva Libertad’s sister.
Eva said that they decided to bring people with disabilities to the cinema screen, and at the same time gave them an opportunity to express how they feel and how they react in different situations.
“I asked Míriam to make a list of her biggest fears when she was thinking of having a baby,” Eva said.
“She filled four sides of A4, which I drew on to write a first draft of the script. She liked it and we went ahead,” Eva said.
Eva said that she and her deaf sister had spent their entire lives sharing their own world made up of a hearing and a deaf identity and reflecting together on deafness.
“The fact that Míriam is deaf is the essence of the project. It is at the origin and gives it all the meaning,” Eva explained.
“In the development phase she read several versions of the script and made suggestions.”
Eva Libertad is a screenwriter, director and sociologist. She developed her filmmaking career at Nexus CreaFilms, where she has written and directed numerous documentary and fiction projects. She finds inspiration in her closest environment and make cinema close to real life, telling traditionally underrepresented stories and invisible social realities.
Among her screenwriting and directing project, Sorda stands out and went on general release in 2021.
Nuria spent a lot of time as a child with her aunt Mari, who was a deaf.
“The time came when I wanted to bring all these experiences, reflections and memories to the cinema and air them to public,” Nuria said.
“Why didn’t Aunt Mari have children? Did she want to have them? Why didn’t she have a partner either?” she mused.
The movie also highlights Ángela’s relationship with her partner, Darío who is hearing,” she added.
“We wanted to investigate the dynamics in a deaf-hearing couple.”
Back to Eva, who speaks highly of Míriam’s ability to ‘be’ in front of the camera. “The instructions in the improvisations and during the shooting were kept simple because we already had a shared code of references,” Eva said.
The directors wanted Ángela to be an autonomous woman, to unfold safely in her environment, and to confront this autonomy with the fears related to motherhood.
They pointed out that addressing this type of human issue in cinema is problematic because producers shy away from this type of story. They have an eye (not a blind one) on the bottom line.
“So, we have a small production company and we produced this movie as its story affects people close to us,” Eva said.
Although the film was released a few months ago, it has been shown in 30 festivals worldwide and garnered nine awards so far.
They announced that the film will be dubbed in Arabic by the Spanish language department at an Egyptian university.
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