A day in the life of a third-grade classroom at the California School for the Deaf.
Like the narrative application of Occam’s Razor, sometimes the best way into a story is the simplest. A View from the Window, a new short documentary from co-directors Chris Filippone and Azar Kafaei, takes this approach. For a day, the filmmakers are flies on the wall in a third-grade class at the California School for the Deaf. Despite the fact that neither Filippone nor Kafaei understands American Sign Language, they trained their camera on the children, keenly attuned to the experience of the kids’ school day. The result is an immersive and deeply moving glimpse into the lives of deaf children.
“We were complete outsiders to the world that you see in the film,” Kafaei told The Atlantic. “Being so deeply disconnected from their intimate world meant that they were also not much bothered by us. So the shoot ended up with us following these kids around throughout the day, and nearly all of the time we had no idea what they were talking or thinking about.”
