“Sound of Metal” film to be released November 20

There is a new film called “Sound of Metal” that is about a drummer named Ruben (Riz Ahmed) of a heavy-metal band who suddenly loses his hearing, struggles to cope with it, and then discovers support from deaf people and learns ASL.

It is a fictional story written and directed by Darius Marder.

There are multiple deaf actors in this film: Lauren Ridloff, Shaheem Sanchez, Chelsea Lee, Joe Toledo, Hillary Baack, and more.

It also has a CODA actor, Paul Raci, playing a key role of a late-deafened person named Joe.

Jeremy Lee Stone was the ASL master behind the scenes for Ahmed, the main role.

I was able to talk with Joe Toledo, who is from Massachusetts. He explained that the filming took place in Massachusetts and that there were multiple deaf actors in background roles. Toledo said his son, Domenico, has one of the bigger roles in it. He was 10 during filming and is 12 now. You can see him in the trailer in a scene where he listens to Ruben hand-drumming on a metal slide. Several students from the Marie Philip School were featured, mostly in background roles.

Toledo said the writer and director of the film, Marder, grew up in Massachusetts.

[Sponsored Video from Convo: https://www.convorelay.com/]

There was an online panel hosted by the American Film Institute (AFI) with CJ Jones as the discussion moderator with the director and several of the film’s stars, both deaf and hearing, making an appearance. It’s about an hour long.

In the panel, Marder said a part of the inspiration for creating the story is observing the experiences her grandmother had when she started experiencing hearing loss and how it affected her identity.

The panel also discussed a hot topic on why it was “okay” for hearing actors to portray late-deafened people — for the characters of Ruben and Joe, who was portrayed by Paul Raci. Raci said on the panel that both characters were late-deafened individuals, that the lines can be blurry, and that there are many different kinds of “deaf” identities in a spectrum.

The links to the trailer and the AFI panel are in the description or the transcript.

The film will be available in theaters on November 20 and then released on Prime Video on December 4.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFOrGkAvjAE

AFI Panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfDOhobmBo4&feature=youtu.be

* Correction: Hillary Baack’s name was misspelled as “Bacck” in the subtitles. We regret the error.