A standout on this year's Doc Edge Film Festival programme is 'A Quiet Love', which won the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film follows three deaf couples - each from different backgrounds and circumstances - connecting through Irish sign language.
The producers of the film Anne Heffernan and Seán Herlihy spoke to Jesse.
The DocEdge Documentary Film Festival is underway in Auckland, and it'll be coming to Wellington and Christchurch from the 16th, and the rest of the country from the 28th.
There is a full transcript of the interview below the image.
Producers Anne Heffernan and Seán Herlihy accepting a Doc Edge Award for their film 'A Quiet Love'. Photo: SUPPLIED/John Lau
Jesse Mulligan: The Doc Edge documentary film festival is underway in Auckland, and it will be coming to Wellington and Christchurch from the 16th and the rest of the country from the 28th. And a standout on the program this year is a Quiet Love, which won the Diversity, equity and Inclusion award at the Kane Film Festival.
The film follows three deaf couples, each from different backgrounds and circumstances connecting through Irish sign language. At last night's gala event, they also took home a dock edge award in the being oneself category. The producers of the film, Anne Henan and Sean Herlihy are with me now. Uh, for this conversation.
Anne will also be interpreting for Sean who is deaf. Uh, tonight is the world premier of acquire love Anne and Sean. Welcome.
Anne Heffernan: Thank you so much. It's lovely to be here.
Jesse Mulligan: Great to have you here in New Zealand, and exciting for us that we get to have the world premier.
Anne Heffernan: Absolutely. I mean, it's such a lovely place to have our world premier.
Anne Heffernan: Um, we're really excited about it and we, we obviously travelled very, uh, far to get here, but like Doc Edge has always been such a lovely festival and we've really supported our director Gary Keen's previous films as well. Um, and when they asked us to come and have the world premier here, wheat. Said yes straight away.
Anne Heffernan: Like they have a lovely ethos as well and we're so willing to kind of provide access with interpreters and everything for us, for the festival. Sean saying New Zealand is so similar to Ireland as well. We just have a kind of a similar vibe, I think, and we have those connections with New Zealand.
Jesse Mulligan: Yes.
Jesse Mulligan: Similar, even competitive, two beautiful countries, 5 million people. I think maybe Ireland will be our, our new rival.
Anne Heffernan: And we may have beat you once or twice in the, I'm not, I'm not saying that, but,
Jesse Mulligan: um, we, we were talking off air about how this is more than just a story about what love is like for deaf people.
Jesse Mulligan: Can you tell us why you wanted to make the film and, and, and really what the film is?
Anne Heffernan: I'll let Sean do this here.
Seán Herlihy: So Sean is just saying, when I was growing up, I never saw deaf people like me in the cinema on tv. I never saw that. And me and Anne really wanted to change that with this film. So, working together, um, with Anne and with Gary, you know, deaf people have these incredibly rich stories, but they're always kind of in the margins and we really wanted to bring these stories into the mainstream and show that, that the deaf community have such beautiful stories.
Jesse Mulligan: And that would almost have been enough to show that there are dear love stories, however, you've chosen three really fascinating couples to look at. Can you tell us about their particular stories?
Anne Heffernan: Yeah, absolutely. Um, our three couples, as you said, such different stories. Um, our first couple, John and Agnes are an older deaf couple from Northern Ireland.
Anne Heffernan: And their story, I mean, their love story really blossomed against the backdrop of the troubles in Northern Ireland, which, um, as we know, devastating kind of conflict that, uh, in that region for, for years and years. And because, um, John is Catholic and Agnes is. Protestant, had they been hearing, they probably never would've met because of the sectarianism that was, um, in the community at that time, by the fact that there was only one school for the deaf that brought them together.
Anne Heffernan: And 66 years later, wow. They have this beautiful, strong relationship despite their family, society, everyone trying to keep them apart. Um, and then our second couple, Michelle and Kathy are an LGBT couple, um, who had their two. Beautiful daughters, um, Sophie and Meghan through IVF, and they talk a little bit about some of the challenges.
Anne Heffernan: Mm-hmm.
Seán Herlihy: Sean is just saying one child is hearing and one child is deaf. So there's a real lot, um, you know, they have challenges obviously when it comes to the, the parenting and kind of matching the needs of both children, but. They're such a beautiful family and the, the resilience and their, their passion for making sure their daughters get everything they need in the world.
Seán Herlihy: And then our third couple are, Sean is just saying Sean and Dana. Sean is deaf and Dana is hearing, and Sean has a cochlear implant. I. And his dream is to become a professional boxer. Um, but in order to get his license, like he's, he was really a accomplished boxer, but to get his license, he can't, um, pass his medical 'cause he has to have an MRI because, but he has a cochlear implant, um, implanted.
Seán Herlihy: He can't get the, uh, MRI to get his professional boxing license. Um, but if he were to remove his cochlear implant surgically, that would mean he'd never hear his partner Dana, or his son's voices again. So he's got this incredible. Life altering decision to make
Jesse Mulligan: the sort of huge life decision that makes documentary films so good, right?
Anne Heffernan: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Jesse Mulligan: Um, and then so deaf couples on screen, and then you made a conscious effort to involve the deaf community offscreen too, I think.
Seán Herlihy: Yeah, Sean is just saying. So, um, myself and Anne, um, before, you know, I never dreamed in my life that it would be possible for me to be a producer. I had no hope that that would be a dream that I could achieve.
Seán Herlihy: And when Anne contacted me to be involved in this film, it just opened the doors for me. Um, and then so we decided. With our film that we wanted, our dream really was to create opportunities for more, um, deaf people in production and for deaf people to be able to see, hey, look, there's, here's a deaf producer who's working in this industry as well, and you can do this too.
Seán Herlihy: So our, our production team, it was a mixed deaf and hearing team, um, and our mixed deaf and hearing actors as well who were working in the film. So they got a chance to see deaf role models as well, like, especially our young children, for example, who'd never acted before. And it was, they were absolute naturals.
Seán Herlihy: They were so beautiful. Um, but they came on set. They saw we had a deaf hairdresser. We had a deaf makeup artist, and they saw all of these deaf role models and was really, really powerful. Um, like even let's say on the set, we had a deaf person who was Irish sign language teacher who taught all of the hearing crew sign before the, the film.
Seán Herlihy: So this was all going on behind the scenes, um, separate to the actual filming happening. So we had employed around 27 deaf people on the production behind the scenes. Mm-hmm.
Jesse Mulligan: You two are a great combination by the way. You're doing a wonderful job of interpreting and I'm really enjoying this conversation.
Jesse Mulligan: Um, is there anything that you did with the film to make it more, uh, rewarding or, uh, accessible for a deaf community to watch the film?
Anne Heffernan: I think, well, so the whole film is subtitled. Um, we made a conscious decision not to voice over our deaf cast, um, which people have described as being a little bit radical, which I thought was kind of funny.
Anne Heffernan: Um, but we wanted it to be very sign language centric and for, um, both deaf and hearing audiences to really engage with our characters expressions and their signs. Um, and. Really have that experience, Sean saying really to be able to see their emotions, um, and connect with them. Um, Sean saying, so before, we have made TV documentaries in the past about the deaf community and they had voiceover and we just didn't the, it was unsatisfactory for us.
Anne Heffernan: We really wanted the audience to. Connect and to even experience a little bit of what it's like to be deaf in the fact that you're a little bit out of your comfort zone and you're really trying to kind of engage in that communication. So it's a really special experience for the audience to go through and we, so we also, we subtitled the deaf and the hearing.
Anne Heffernan: Characters in the film as well, so that everyone watching it has the same kind of connection to, to what's happening.
Jesse Mulligan: I'd encourage people to, um, uh, sorry. I'll come back to you in a moment, Sean. I'd encourage people to check out the trailer, which gives you a, a really good sense of o of the documentary.
Jesse Mulligan: Um, if you searched up a quiet love, in fact, we'll put the, uh, trailer on our website, r nz.co.nz/jesse so you can take a look. Um, what do you hope audiences deaf or hearing will get out of the film?
Anne Heffernan: I think. I'd love them to be surprised. I'd love any misconceptions or any ideas that people have about the deaf community, maybe from having very limited experience with meeting deaf people to be challenged, um, and to be changed as well. And I think, um, often people, when people see people communicating in sign language, if they don't know that language themselves, maybe have a feeling that the language is limited in some way.
Anne Heffernan: Actually that limitation comes from us as hearing people, our understanding of the language. And when you see a deaf person signing so fluently and so beautifully, um, and you know, through subtitles get the full idea of how nuanced the language is and everything, I think that's a really beautiful experience for everyone to, to have.
Anne Heffernan: And Sean and I have this idea that everyone who watches the film would learn 10 signs in the language of the sign language of their country. So obviously each country has different sign languages. So, um, Sean has been working with the deaf community here to create a little video with 10 signs in New Zealand sign language.
Anne Heffernan: So after the screenings, we're gonna be making that video available and hope that everyone, hope the audience gets to learn 10 signs in their, their national sign language and remembers them going forward. So.
Jesse Mulligan: I am sure your life is busy promoting this film and traveling with it now, but given the success you've had and the great feedback you've had, are you already thinking about your next project as producers?
Anne Heffernan: We are, yes. Very early development at the moment on another beautiful deaf, um, documentary that's, um, about a group of Irish deaf swimmers who beautiful, bubbly, vivacious women who, um, have in incre again, incredibly layered stories and have come together through sea swimming. They, they swim in a gentleman's only bathing place.
Anne Heffernan: Mm-hmm. And you see these. Incredible women coming together, but it's really a story about social isolation in the deaf community and how they've used swimming to kind of overcome that. Right. So that's next on the slate.
Jesse Mulligan: You, I, I mentioned you're actually, um, my second deaf interviewee this week. Earlier I was talking to, uh, a woman about what it's like for a deaf person to go to a concert.
Jesse Mulligan: And you were telling me off Air Sean, that you went to that Coldplay concert that we were discussing.
Seán Herlihy: Yeah, I did Sean saying I went last August in Ireland, uh, in Crow Park in one of our big venues there. It's a big Irish, uh, GA stadium. And we had these vibrating vests. It was such an unbelievable experience.
Seán Herlihy: We had captions, we had deaf interpreters as well, and hearing interpreters to translate the, the concert. It was a once in a lifetime experience. Absolutely amazing. I felt so included. I felt I was the same as all the other concert goers. Who was, who were there. It was really amazing.
Jesse Mulligan: Great. Well, it's lovely to have you both in New Zealand, the world premier of a Quiet love is at 6:00 PM Bridgeway Cinema in Auckland tonight as part of the Dock Edge Festival.
Jesse Mulligan: And you'll be hosting a q and a afterwards. Uh, thank you so much for coming in today and best of luck with the film.
Anne Heffernan: Thank you so much for having us, Kia ora. Thank you.
