Born profoundly deaf in Iraqi Kurdistan, Lawand had little hope of a fulfilling life if he stayed in the country of his birth. His disability was stigmatised, and there was no infrastructure in place to support him. With their son’s wellbeing in mind, his parents made the wrenching decision to make the perilous journey to the UK with the then five-year-old Lawand and his older brother Rawa. There, Lawand was enrolled at the Royal School for the Deaf in Derby, and he thrived, achieving fluency in British Sign Language, making friends. Then the unthinkable happened: Lawand and his family were threatened with deportation.
Even without documentary director Edward Lovelace’s inventive approach, this would be a potent and powerful story. But what’s particularly impressive is the way that, through immersive techniques involving sound, and skittish editing that evokes fractured, traumatic memory snippets, the film tries to capture Lawand’s lived experience. It’s a remarkable achievement, a film that, with its poetic sensitivity and creativity, has a strong kinship with Peter Middleton and James Spinney’s Notes on Blindness.
