Mira el silencio (2022) on Netflix

A group of deaf people demonstrate just how powerful sign language can be as a means of expression. Following a poetry workshop, they perform poems in a unique way, showing that imagination knows no boundaries.

A group of deaf people explore the Mexican Sign Language through a scenic lab of poetic creation. Regard Silence shows this unique creative process, while attempting to make explicit the distance from which we listeners (the audience) connect to the sensations proper to Deafness: almost always failing to recognize them as a different way of naming and inhabiting the world.

"I love poetry because it makes me feel like my mind expands." In Regard Silence, that's the very first sentence expressed-in sign language of course. Watching the poems signed by deaf people in this film has a similarly mind- expanding effect. That's because sign language-the Mexican version in this case-is a very different means of communication than written or spoken language. Regard Silence shows several deaf people participating in a poetry workshop. Their attempts to express themselves are alternated in the film with individual interviews about being a deaf person communicating in a hearing world. How does it affect one's sense of self-worth to learn sign language after years of lip reading? Some of the participants go a step further during their poetry readings: one of them signs, "We have to tear down the limits of imagination." They come up with their own signs, only some of which can be understood through association or context. But that's not the main point-it's the powerful form of self-expression that leaves a lasting impression.

—Sasja Koetsier