Catalan production 'Sorda' ('Deaf') wins two awards at Berlinale Film Festival

The Catalan production 'Sorda', directed by Eva Libertad, has won two awards at the prestigious Berlinale International Film Festival this weekend. 

'Sorda', or 'Deaf' in English, won the Audience Award in the Panorama section as well as the top prize given by the International Confederation of Art and Essay Cinemas (CICAE, as it's known as for its acronym in French).

The film is the first Spanish feature film starring a deaf actress, Miriam Garlo, and explores the challenges that arise in a couple when facing parenthood when one is deaf and the other is hearing.

The film did not compete for the Golden Bear, the biggest prize of the whole festival, but received double honors in other categories.

In the film, Ángela, a deaf woman, will have a baby girl with Héctor, her hearing partner. The pregnancy brings to light her fears about motherhood and about how she will be able to communicate with her daughter. The arrival of the baby will alter the couple's relationship and lead Ángela to face parenting in a world that is not made for her.

As Libertad explained to the Catalan News Agency (ACN), the story arises because Miriam Garlo, the protagonist, is her sister: “I was able to explain it because she is deaf and we have been accompanying each other all our lives, she from her deaf identity and I, hearing.”

The basis of the film idea comes from the bond that the director has with her sister, but the storyline is fictional. “I conducted interviews with deaf mothers to document their experiences in pregnancy, childbirth and parenting,” she explains.

The director regrets that generally in society, there is little to no education or awareness for the abled population to relate to people with disabilities or with difference in general. She believes that “there must be a political will so that the world of difference and disability is more incorporated into life. Then there is something more individual which is empathy and putting yourself in the place of the other who has different living conditions than yours.”

Garlo points out that society in general is “very uninformed” because it does not know what it is to be a deaf person, what the deaf community is or sign language. “It is this lack of knowledge and lack of information that limits awareness and awareness-raising,” she reflected.

‘Sorda’ is a production by Miriam Porté for Distinto Films, in co-production with Nuria Muñoz Ortín for Nexus CreaFilms and Adolfo Blanco for A Contracorriente Films and was released just this month in the Panorama section of the Berlinale.

Libertad said that debuting the film in Berlin is “a dream come true.” “We made the film so that it reaches the public, and we hope Berlin can be a catalyst so that when it is released in theaters, people will go to the cinema.”

Gaudís and Goyas 

The Goya Awards ceremony, the Spanish Film Academy Awards held on February 8, was a testimony to the rising success of Catalan cinema, with prizes, applause and a feeling that Catalonia is one of the driving forces of world-class film production. This month on Filling the Sink, we put our finger on the pulse of modern Catalan cinema, look back over its history and analyze future trends.

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