The Silent Heroes - 13 Deaf Child Actors

The Silent Heroes – 13 Deaf Child Actors

The Silent Heroes is the world’s first film with real deaf actors and is perhaps the first attempt by a film maker to create a story with these special children as heroes. This is an adventurous-emotional story of 13 real deaf children on a Himalayan mission, their struggle for survival, their courage and their heroism. The Silent Heroes has been screened at various film festivals and received excellent audience response, Kolkata International Children’s Film Festival, Dehradun International Film Festival and Prayag International Film Festival. Enjoy the worlds first open caption film on 11th December 2015.

A Note from the director, Mahesh Bhatt

My first encounter with the world of silence was five years back in a school for special children while making a documentary on deaf kids. It left a great impact on my mind as I had never experienced anything like that before. World calls them handicap but after spending time with them I felt like a handicap in their world unable to understand their life, signals and actions.

I realized that they are not disabled, but simply differently abled and the same thought later became the premise and foundation for my film ‘The Silent Heroes’. With that one liner I moved ahead to this adventurous journey and conceptualized whole story after that.

Next step – Real heroes: 13 real deaf kids. Location: Snow laden mountains of Himalayas. And between the fast flow of Ganges and its frequent rapids, we tried to capture Uttarakhand’s beauty and life as it was before the disaster of 2013.

I wanted to do the film with real deaf kids who have actually gone through pain and hardships because only they could have done justice to the roles, and they have. I chose real locations for more realistic approach. I knew it would be a challenge for me and I knew it would be much more than a challenge for these kids. I was initially skeptical about inexperienced innocent kids being able to do what was required in script or withstand unfavorable climatic conditions and hard shooting schedules. But I was surprised to see the enthusiasm and excitement of the kids which cleared off all the doubts from my mind.

Shooting during the scary cold winter of February, I remember sometimes we had to go early foggy morning before sunrise to locations and sometimes stay near scary rivers at night amidst cold skin piercing air waiting for shots to be canned. Crew members weren’t even able to stand but they did. Professional artists were giving retakes but never called quits. And in between all this, those 13 kids showed us a strange amount of courage and will power by not just withstanding the angry climate but giving first take OK shots. They were the real source of inspiration and motivation for all of us.