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The 3-year-old twins Oskar and Leo grow up on the outskirts of Vienna in multi-level home with a big backyard. The film starts in these familiar family surroundings. It is the place where the children and their parents live. And it is also the starting point for the long-term project that accompanies the boys over the course of a year, a project that documents the brother’s discoveries and learning processes.
The director Martin Nguyen is himself fluent in sign language, which enables him to communicate and get close to the children without a third person. This direct, reciprocal contact and exchange in communication can be felt in the film and these aspects are important elements – particularly through an intensive phase of acquaintance and developing a trusting relationship with the children and parents.
The film examines what the diagnosis “deaf” means to Oskar’s hearing parents, Sandra and Stefan. The cochlear implant that could enable Oskar to hear has been an issue since his birth, but for the time being his parents have decided to take sign language classes and to raise the children in what is for them a foreign language. Leo is being brought up bilingual, with sign language and spoken language. For Oskar, however, sign language is his essential form of expression – his mother tongue. |
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