Director Matt Ogens And EP Nyle DiMarco On Their Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Audible’, A Coming-Of-Age Story Of Deaf High School Football Star
deadline.comAs voters across the Academy branches mull over their Oscar nomination ballots, among the films they’re considering are two that deal with the Deaf experience.
One, CODA, is the fictional coming of age story of a girl raised by Deaf parents. The other – Audible – tells a coming of age story as well, but this one is real.The short documentary from Netflix, directed by Matt Ogens, centers on Amaree McKenstry, a senior at the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, who grew up in a family where he was the only Deaf person.“I do feel lonely,” Amaree says in the film. “When I was a kid, they would just talk around me.
And I didn’t understand any of it, so I’d just go off on my own. When I run into hearing people out in the world, I feel, as a Deaf person, I am alone.”For McKenstry, attending a school for Deaf kids means everything – the chance to be immersed in Deaf culture, alongside students and teachers who communicate in ASL.
As the film explores, he finds a further source of camaraderie – a band of brothers, in a sense – as a teammate on MSD’s highly-competitive football team.Ogens is not hearing impaired himself, but he says he felt a strong connection to MSD.“I grew up in Maryland, my best friend is Deaf,” he explains, “my aunt even taught sign language at the school.”He began work on the documentary project a decade ago.“I knew that I wanted to tell a coming of age story.
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