Le pays des Sourds

A film that deals with the 'land of the deaf' requires the same effort from the audience as what is asked from the deaf in ordinary life: to put their other senses to extra use. In Le pays des sourds we see how deaf children learn to speak with the help of visualisations of sounds on a screen. Generally speaking, people who can hear well obviously feel that it is important for children with hearing problems to learn to express themselves orally in one way or another. Apart from images of the lessons they receive we see interviews with adult deaf persons. Most of them come from families where everybody else can hear well, which cuts them off from society, but also from their own family. One of the people Nicolas Philibert interviewed for his film advocates an Esperanto for sign language, because as it is now the various sign languages differ greatly. Le pays des sourds shows that people do not necessarily need speech to express themselves in a variegated way.