‘Sorda’ (‘Deaf’), A Film About the Anxieties of Having a Child in a Hearing World

A great drama that has garnered three Goya Awards, among its dozens of wins and nominations

A couple swimming underwater, facing each other (Image by Leticia Azevedo on Pexels)

I went into a store the other day, looking to buy something sweet. It was full of Turkish products, and I asked if they had anything gluten-free. The salesperson paused for a moment and then said no, even though, looking around, it was clear to me some of those foods, like halva, were, in fact, gluten-free.

But now imagine a deaf woman wanting to ask the same question at a store where the answer isn’t readily available — for instance somewhere with less familiar ethnic foods. In the vast majority of cases, that individual wouldn’t stand a chance of getting an answer from the salesperson simply because the latter wouldn’t know sign language. Okay, many deaf people can lip-read, but if my experience today was any indication, the sales associate would be so detached from her role that she may not even bother to say more than “No” when she could easily take the deaf woman around the shop and show her some products. To be fair, the salesperson I met today did come from behind the counter to the product shelves when I lingered there, but all she did was read the same products I’d pick up to inspect. It was too little, too late; yet I have to say I appreciated her gesture.

This brings me to the movie Deaf (Sorda, in Spanish) by Eva Libertad. (As a brief note, preparing this article I learned that Deaf is the term preferred by the Deaf community, and deaf for the condition, rather than hearing-impaired, as it appears in this movie’s plot outline on IMDb.) It was released in 2025, and it won the Panorama Audience Award at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, along with 38 other wins and 38 nominations. And rightly so.

The movie tells the story of Ángela (Miriam Garlo), who was born hearing but then became deaf. She is married to Héctor (Álvaro Cervantes), and they have a good, loving relationship. Ángela works as a potter in a small village (Héctor’s job is unspecified), and they enjoy swimming in a small lake next to a waterfall. It’s nicely suggested by the beautiful cinematography that while Ángela can’t hear the waterfall rushing down, she can certainly feel the water’s movements and the play of sunlight on the rocks.

And then, right off this first scene, we’re taken to the moment where pregnant Ángela and Héctor toss around baby names. From here on, the movie is centered on experiences of early motherhood and fatherhood. First, there’s Ángela’s delight when pregnant, dampened somewhat before she gets to share her news by her hearing mother’s casual comment that they are fine without a child, as well as by her own anxieties about how she’d care for the baby when it’s born. Then there’s Ángela’s delivery, portrayed in the movie in six intense minutes. At first, Héctor is by her side, interpreting for her. Then he’s taken away, and Ángela has to go through the harrowing experience of trying to help her baby come into the world while not understanding what exactly is going wrong when a gynecologist (with a mask, which means Ángela can’t lip-read what this doctor says) rushes to her side.

Finally, there’s Ángela and Héctor raising baby Ona up to one year old. There’s a period of time when they don’t know if Ona is hearing or deaf. It’s not clear what Ángela wants as they wait for Ona’s medical evaluation at two months old, but she is hurt when she catches Héctor snapping his fingers next to Ona’s ear to see if he gets a reaction.

And then Ona is shown to be hearing, and Héctor and her parents welcome her into this world with lots of chatting and singing. Ángela feels left out, especially when Ona starts kindergarten and the employees and other parents there don’t use sign language. Then Héctor does more and more work for Ona and the family and some resentment builds between the two, not only on Héctor’s part for putting in more effort, but also on Ángela’s part for feeling she is not welcome to spend more time with Ona and her husband.

Here the sound of the movie is cut off, and we’re thus thrown into Ángela’s world, where she doesn’t hear the baby’s cries, and we feel that maybe she’s frustrated by that, too. The movie treads a careful line between acceptance of a Deaf lifestyle as another, equally valid, way of being in the world and sadness at not being more of a part of the hearing community. It also portrays Ángela not only through the lens of her Deaf identity, but also through the prism of her human condition. She is struggling against the world like all of us. She is enjoying the company of her friends, in this case adults who are members of the Deaf community. She is trying to connect to her friends’ kids — as well as to other people in the world, just like I did with the salesperson. She is a loving daughter and wife, who nevertheless suffers because she is not supported enough. She fights with her husband, but they are united by true love, so they find their way back to each other.

The movie offers a very sensitive portrait of all those struggles, while also showing the beauty of human connections.

Now about the actors. Miriam Garlo as Ángela is beyond fabulous. But then how can she not be? The movie is partly based on her experiences as a deaf woman. And then she’s also the sister of the writer and director Eva Libertad! Yes, Miriam Garlo is Eva Libertad’s sister. And Libertad has previously done a short titled Sorda based on the same story and also featuring Garlo. But, as Garlo herself emphasizes, it’s important to keep in mind that these films are not about her life story, much as they are inspired by it. As a side note, Garlo is not only an actor but also a visual artist with a PhD in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid.

As Garlo’s sister, Libertad had an intimate understanding of what it is to live as a deaf person, even though Garlo only learned sign language and joined the Deaf community at thirty. In that sense and others, Garlo in life and Ángela in Sorda reflect singular perspectives, much as they do open up windows to the experiences of many women from the Deaf community. With that caveat, it’s probably fair to say that this movie has been a while in the making — even though after the 2021 short, Garlo opted against having children. Her sister, however, kept thinking about it.

Ángelo Cervantes is also extraordinary. He doesn’t overact, when he easily could, but instead finds the right pitch every time. The scenes are all emotionally charged in this film, so his job wasn’t easy. But he was right for this role, I guess. He also has great chemistry with Garlo, which is an important plus in this film. Cervantes won the 2026 Goya Award as Best Supporting Actor for this film, and Miriam Garlo a 2026 Goya Award as Best New Actress.

Eva Libertad won a Goya too, for Best New Director.

In fact, come to think of it, this film has very few shortcomings. One of them, I feel, has to do with the way the baby actors were employed. There was a succession of them, and it was confusing. As they were showing Ona between birth and one year old, perhaps fewer than seven babies would have been advised. That said, Ona at one year old was fantastic. I don’t know if it was Daniela Saura Pérez or Elaia Sánchez in the scenes I liked best, but those scenes were memorable, and the final scene landed beautifully.

I highly recommend this film! At the time of my writing this, it has only 6 user reviews on IMDb, which is a shame. The critics have been more generous with their 49 reviews, but this is a film that deserves more popularity.

Enjoy!

Thank you for reading!

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To a happier, healthier life,

Mira