Eva Libertad’s Deaf (2025) delivers one of the most intense childbirth scenes ever put on film. Miriam Garlo plays Ángela, a deaf woman in labour, surrounded by nurses and doctors who seem either oblivious or indifferent to her deafness. They bark orders at her as if she can hear them, shouting for her to push and breathe. Her husband, Héctor (Álvaro Cervantes), who can hear and sign, does his best to interpret, but it’s not enough. In a moment of pure frustration and survival, Ángela rips a doctor’s surgical mask off just so she can read his lips.
It’s a gripping, visceral moment — one of many in Libertad’s deeply personal drama (Libertad and Garlo are sisters in real life), which deeply explores the isolation Ángela feels. Not because people don’t care, but because they don’t fully understand.
After a peaceful skinny dip in a swimming hole, the film opens with Ángela and Héctor in bed, tossing around baby names. They’re affectionate, deeply in sync — it’s clear that Héctor loves her. He’s attentive, he makes an effort, he even joins dinners with her deaf friends. But when the question of their baby’s hearing comes up, an invisible weight settles over them.
Then, the news: their child will be able to hear. And suddenly, things shift. Subtle at first — small cracks that widen over time. After the baby is born, the distance grows. The child gravitates toward Héctor, communication coming easier with him, leaving Ángela on the outside looking in.
For its first hour, Deaf does a brilliant job showing these everyday tensions piling up, feeding this creeping dread that Ángela’s deafness — at least in the context of having a hearing husband and child — might ultimately pull her family apart.
And this is where Deaf completely outshines the schmaltzy, Oscar-winning CODA (Sian Heder, 2021). Instead of centering the story around a hearing character, Libertad keeps the focus where it belongs: on Ángela. The film considers everyone’s wants and needs, including Héctor’s, but this is her story. From the agony of hearing aids that amplify high frequencies to unbearable levels to struggling through meals where people talk over each other without making eye contact — making lip reading impossible — her frustration is palpable. Whether she’s being ridiculed for dancing with her deaf friends at a nightclub or just trying to exist in a world that constantly overlooks her, Deaf pulls us deep into Ángela’s reality. It’s immersive and profoundly effective filmmaking.
And the film doesn’t hold back from the harsh truths that so many deaf and disabled people face. Even with loving partners, friends, and family, there’s always a gap — one that can’t fully be bridged by good intentions alone. Libertad captures that beautifully, especially in one fantastic directorial choice heading into the final act.
As tensions between Ángela and Héctor reach a breaking point, the film strips away almost all sound, leaving only muffled noise and sharp, piercing tones. Suddenly, we’re not just watching Ángela’s struggle — we’re in it. We experience her world as she does. Plenty of films have used this technique before, such as The Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, 2019) or Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006), but Deaf commits to it for an extended stretch, making it feel even more raw and intimate. It’s a bold, deeply respectful choice — one that forces the audience to sit in Ángela’s discomfort, just as she’s doing in that moment.
Jared loves movies and lives with Kiki in Berlin.