Director Statement

The 1880 Milan Conference on the Education of the Deaf still looms large over the Deaf community today, nearly 150 years later. I was shocked to learn that signed languages had been banned, and yet, for an oppression that had such profound and lasting effects for so many people, it is known by so few today.

I learned about the Milan Conference during production of Deafening Darkness, my first film collaboration with the Deaf community of Toronto. It was one of two topics that kept coming up time and again from my Deaf collaborators, the other being equally contentious: cochlea implants.

With the huge advances in medical technology and the gradually increasing success rates of cochlea implants, many people in the Deaf community feel like their culture and language is under threat once again and that their concerns are not being heard.

Separated by over 100 years, and with approaches that have grown more subtle and sophisticated, the historical and contemporary oppressions of Deaf people go hand in hand: manual languages are subjugated in order to favour auditory ones. Audism - the belief that the ability to hear makes one superior to those with hearing loss - is a subject scarcely known about, and is at the core of the story I wanted to tell.

I wanted to tell a story that was, in and of itself, about storytelling, weaving into the very fabric of the film the passing on of language from generation to generation. I chose to work again with an all Deaf cast, which meant flipping the script on the typical representation of Deaf and disabled people in cinema by casting Deaf people in hearing roles. And in doing so, I've created a film that can provide hope and inspiration for anybody struggling with their sense of identity, whether they be connected to the Deaf community or not.