“Song of Silence is a film of few words — at least, few audible words. The stellar cast consists almost entirely of Deaf women, who use sign language to communicate about their tasks in a matriarchal community that has survived calamitous horror.
Where are the men? That’s part of the horror.
The film is strikingly succinct and efficient — it leaves lots of clues for the audience, but never overexplains. What it leaves us to imagine is worse than anything it could show.
The film, which plays Saturday at Dances With Films New York, comes from director and co-writer Vasilisa Kuzmina, a Russian-Iranian filmmaker whose feature debut Nika won Special Jury Recognition at SXSW 2022.
She co-wrote it with Daisy Anderson, and producer and American Sign Language consultant Douglas Ridloff helped connect Kuzmina with Deaf actors including Deanne Bray, who plays the leader of the community.
We asked Vasilisa Kuzmina about avoiding needless exposition, shooting on a tight budget, and the rules of “Song of Silence.”
Vasilisa Kuzmina on Her Short Film ‘Song of Silence’
MovieMaker: How did you become a filmmaker?
Vasilisa Kuzmina: By accident and fate, I guess.
MovieMaker: What was the spark for this idea, and how did it develop?
Vasilisa Kuzmina: My co-writer and I had a very simple idea — a man returns home to a community now entirely of women. We knew that this was something we wanted to explore and from here the rest of story began to unfold. We started by thinking what his relationships upon turning home would look like, and that is when we decided to focus on his relationship with his mother.
This story is a love story between a mother and son under terrible circumstances.
MovieMaker: I loved how much you don’t reveal — we have guesses about how these women survive, and guesses about what happened in the years before the film, but a lot is left to our imagination. It’s very scary, suspenseful and thought-provoking. How much backstory did you develop for this world, and are there enough clues for us to decipher it if we really try?
Vasilisa Kuzmina: Initially we wrote a feature version of this film. it has different characters though, but similar premise. so the rules of the world were clear to us.
MovieMaker: What was your biggest challenge in making this film, and how did you overcome it?
Vasilisa Kuzmina: It was a really large scale project for a short film with a small budget. With huge numbers of extras and children, shooting on film, and multiple locations, we had to be constantly adapting our storytelling strategies to get everything we needed everyday.
MovieMaker: Did you have any key references or influences? Or any first-hand experiences that were crucial to the story?
Vasilisa Kuzmina: Being a woman was definitely a first-hand experience that I drew on! Our film is a genre film, but the intense patriarchy and the need to survive at any cost is very real. What these women have experienced in our film is scarily close to what millions of women still experience today.
“Song of Silence” plays Saturday as part of Shorts Block 5 at Dances With Films New York. You can read more of our Dances With Films New York coverage here.
Main image: Deanne Bray in “Song of Silence.”
