GOETHE-CINEMA: BEYOND SILENCE

Family Affairs

Monthly thematic film series by the Goethe-Institut Ottawa highlighting films from Germany presented at the University of Ottawa (Hamelin Hall, 70 Av. Laurier East):

Beyond Silence
Jenseits der Stille
Germany, Switzerland, 1996, 112 min.
Director: Caroline Link
With: Sylvie Testud, Tatjana Trieb, Howie Seago, Emmanuelle Laborit, Sibylle Canonica, Matthias Habich, Alexandra Bolz, Hansa Czypionka etc.

Eight-year-old Lara is a child of deaf adults, a CODA. She often acts as a ‘translator’ for her parents in all kinds of situations. Lara has a particularly close relationship with her father, Martin. When Lara becomes more and more friends with his sister Clarissa, with whom he did not have a good relationship, due to family-trauma, Martin reacts with jealousy. Clarissa, a clarinet player, sparks a love of the instrument in her niece, a passion that her parents find difficult to understand due to their deafness.

Ten years later, Lara has matured into a self-confident young woman. Her decision to move to Berlin to live with her aunt Clarissa and to apply for the music academy leads to a heated argument with her parents. In Berlin, she falls in love with Tom, a much older teacher of the deaf, and feels a sense of unprecedented freedom. However, a tragic accident puts the family and Lara’s once trusting relationship with her father Martin to the test.

“Beyond Silence is one of those films that helps us escape our box of time and space and understand what it might be like to live in someone else’s.” – Roger Ebert (2000) for Chicago Sun-Times