German writer-director Milan Skrobanek (behind the documentary Starting 5) recently presented his fiction feature debut, The Unspoken Language [+lee también:
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entrevista: Milan Skrobanek
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Cineuropa: What inspired you to tell a story about the friendship between a deaf woman and a visually impaired man?
Milan Skrobanek: When two people meet for the first time, it's not necessarily the words they say that determine whether they are attracted to each other. It can happen that you don't like someone even though they are very nice to you, and vice versa. Whether we like someone also depends on body language, reading between the lines and their smell. These subconscious olfactory factors play a major role, especially when choosing a partner. I wanted to take this contradiction to the extreme and show how two people who cannot easily communicate with each other can still fall in love.

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How did you find the two protagonists, who are also deaf and visually impaired in real life?
There are only a handful of actresses in Germany who are deaf. Cindy [Klink] was relatively easy to find because she already had an agent and had previously appeared in a crime-drama. It was a very long process to find a visually impaired film partner who would be a good match for her. We contacted associations and institutions, and held a nationwide casting call that lasted over a year. There were around 100 applicants. We invited in various candidates and, after three rounds, finally found David [Knors], who had no previous acting experience.

What did that mean for the work on set?
On set, communicating with a deaf person is much more complicated than it is with a visually impaired person, who can be given specific directions. He had his own assistant during filming, who took care of the organisational aspects. For our lead actress, we had a sign-language interpreter, who had to stand in the right light so as not to be blinded. The scenes with three or four deaf people were really complicated. For this, we had to hire a deaf supervisor and several sign-language interpreters, who took turns.

How helpful are digital tools for communicating with deaf and visually impaired people?
These technical aids are extremely helpful in everyday life for visually impaired or deaf people. David can have everything read to him via his mobile phone's voice output and use it to book trains, get directions via the navigation system or choose clothes. The mobile phone is very present in the first act of the film. During rehearsals, however, we realised that the emotions between the main characters could not unfold via a technical device. Since it takes a very long time for them to write to each other, we reduced their verbal exchanges to the essentials.

How did the collaboration with your co-writer Eibe Maleen Krebs start?
Eibe and I studied together at film school in Hamburg. She had already filmed with visually impaired people for her documentary Vom Hörensagen. She is also one of the organisers of the Klappe Auf! festival in Hamburg, which offers barrier-free access for visually impaired and deaf people. In that respect, she was the perfect co-writer for this material.

How did the film funds, broadcasters and financiers react to this project, since they are always looking for unusual material but also want to appeal to a wide audience?
I'd been trying to get funding for the project and find production partners since 2013. It took almost seven years before we received treatment funding from the MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein. This was followed by script and project development funding. When our script was nominated for the German Screenplay Award, ZDF joined our project, enabling Curlypictures and Tamtam Film to bring Nordmedia and the DFFF on board as additional funding sources.