Ever since Caroline Link's Academy Award-nominated debut, 1996’s Beyond Silence, there has hardly been another German feature that has delved so deeply into the world of deaf and visually impaired people. For the two leading roles in his fiction feature debut, The Unspoken Language [+leggi anche:
intervista: Milan Skrobanek
scheda film], which has premiered at Filmfest Hamburg, German director Milan Skrobanek cast actors who are deaf and visually impaired in real life. The German indie drama is about the happiness and vulnerability inherent in a relationship that finds its way through adversity. The Hamburg-based filmmaker, who has already made several documentaries, also presented his doc Starting 5 at the same festival in 2016. The script of The Unspoken Language, which Skrobanek co-wrote with his fellow student Eibe Maleen Krebs, was shortlisted for the German Screenplay Award.

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Young Kati (Cindy Klink) is deaf; she prefers to discover the world through her camera. Florian (David Knors) volunteers as a stadium commentator for the football team FC St Pauli, and he is visually impaired. They meet at the Dialoghaus Hamburg in the warehouse district – an inclusion project where visitors are accompanied by guides to experience the sensory world of deaf and visually impaired people in dark rooms and absolute silence. Kati has been working there for a long time and is very committed, while Florian is forced by the employment agency to take a job at the centre.

During their very first encounter, there is already some chemistry between them, and they are soon attracted to each other. Communication is quite difficult, however: they have to use mobile-phone apps or the Lorm alphabet for deaf-blind people, who feel the letters with their hands. As they become closer, their social environments and families put their love to the test. When Florian receives a visit from his brother, who tells him that his much-despised father is dying, he can’t control his feelings any more. He repeatedly rejects Kati, who wants to be close to him, until she breaks up with him. At his father's funeral in his hometown on the North Frisian island of Sylt, he realises how much he misses Kati and tries to win her back.

The Unspoken Language is a rather quiet, gentle drama whose strongest moments are when it focuses on the relationship between this couple. The filmmaker completely trusts in the authenticity of his protagonists and refrains from any romanticising, emotional kitsch. In clear and subtly balanced images, Skrobanek and cinematographer Andreas M Klein calmly follow the protagonists as they turn to each other in their own way. This is the case in the final act, when Kati wants to leave Sylt again and walks down the beach while Florian follows behind and tries to stop her. He even gets very close to her, but doesn't know if she is really standing right in front of him, because she doesn't reveal herself. In this scene, love, closeness and loss intermingle.

The film’s most intimate and credible moments are when it sticks to the fragile emotional world of its protagonists. The family backgrounds, on the other hand, seem a tad meaningless and the conflicts too on the nose. In addition, some questions remain unanswered, and not everything in the movie is comprehensible.

The Unspoken Language is a co-production by Hamburg-based Curlypictures and Tamtam Film, together with ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel. Port-au-Prince Pictures was also involved in the production of the project.