Canadian Premiere
Diagnosed with bilateral sensorineural progressive hearing loss in the first grade, Charo Mato became fully deaf by the age of 23, and received cochlear implants against her parents’ wishes. Structured with eight distinct stories and questions, Mato’s autobiographical documentary flits between childhood stories and digressive memories, the scientific and medical explanations of hearing loss and implants, and poetic ruminations on the nature of life and language. Mato uses the film to process her own experience, interweaving home videos of her childhood with the stories and lives of people she’s interviewing for the film, and exploring the stories and lives of the d/Deaf and hard of hearing while resisting a monolithic experience. A beautiful, highly personal film processing and celebrating the experiences of those with hearing loss.
Q&A Oct 4 & Oct 6
Argentina/Uruguay
2021
In Spanish with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Sentimental Value
A once-revered director crashes back into his family’s lives, eager to recruit his daughter for a film role. When she declines, he finds a new muse in an eager but unpolished Hollywood star, sending his botched reconciliation spiraling into chaos.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
L'Étranger
Recreating 1940s Algeria in vivid, high contrast black and white cinematography, L'Etranger is erotic, enigmatic and brutal in equal measures, a masterful screen version of Albert Camus's insoluble classic of existential alienation.
The Chronology of Water
Kristen Stewart's fearless directorial debut is based on the best-selling memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots), a chronicle of her abusive childhood, traumatized adulthood, and escapes through swimming, drugs, sex, and ultimately writing.
Credits
Executive Producer
Charo Mato, Eugenia Olascuaga
Producer
Charo Mato, Eugenia Olascuaga, Valentina Baracco
Screenwriter
Charo Mato
Cinematography
Tomás Ridilenir
ANIM
Juan Cavia, Juan Pablo Sandoval, Roxana Vazquez
Editor
Camila Muhafra
Original Music
Maximiliano Silveira
Director
Charo Mato
Charo Mato is a filmmaker who studied Image and Sound Design at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (FADU-UBA). She has been a fellow of the Sundance Documentary Film Program and Talents Buenos Aires. Her first documentary, 8 Stories About My Hearing Loss, is supported by Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), Instituto Nacional del Cine y el Audiovisual del Uruguay (INCAU), and Sundance. The film premiered at the Buenos Aires International Documentary Film Festival (FIDBA) and won best film at the Construir Cine – Festival Internacional de Cine Sobre el Trabajo (International Labour Film Festival).