‘A Quiet Love’ review: Sensitive documentary follows three deaf Irish couples

Dir: Garry Keane. Ireland. 2025. 96mins

Documenting the relationships of three very different deaf Irish couples, A Quiet Love is an intimate, big-hearted celebration of everyday triumph over adversity. As its title suggests, the film does not paint its subjects as all-conquering heroes, rather normal people navigating a challenging path through life. In allowing its subjects to tell their own stories entirely in their own words – all communicate through Irish Sign Language (ISL) – the film effectively spotlights a community not often given space on screen.

 Takes a proactive, pragmatic approach to the issue of representation

Accomplished documentarian Garry Keane (Gaza, In The Shadow Of Beirut) first collaborated with producing team Anne Heffernan and Sean Herlihy – who is himself deaf – on These Walls Could Talk (2015), about abuse in a deaf boys’ school. That, and their follow-up Deafening (2017), were made for Irish broadcaster RTE, and A Quiet Love is the team’s first cinematic feature (and Ireland’s first feature in ISL). While the film may find it difficult to make a theatrical mark after its premiere at New Zealand’s Doc Edge festival, it could well interest socially conscious streamers or broadcasters, and could also prove an effective educational tool.

A Quiet Love concentrates on three couples: septuagenarians John and Agnes, a Catholic and Protestant who met during the height of the Troubles at a school for the deaf – one of the few places the two religions were able to mix at the time; Kathy and Michelle, who fell in love when same-sex marriage was illegal in Ireland; and deaf boxer Sean and his hearing girlfriend Deyanna, who face hurdles in Sean’s pursuit of a career in the ring.

All make for compelling subjects and all speak eloquently about the trials they have faced, many of which are unrelated to their deafness – religious persecution, prejudice, substance addiction. Where the film really makes an impact, however, is in its study of how deafness can affect all areas of life, in often surprising ways.

John and Agnes, for example, speak of the terror and isolation of being deaf in a war zone, unable to hear the bullets and explosions around them. Kathy and Michelle discuss the challenges of having one hearing and one deaf child, and the trauma of the time their youngest daughter contracted meningitis and they could not follow the doctors’ frantic conversation in the emergency room. And Sean finds his path to professional boxing is hampered by the fact his cochlear implant prevents him from getting an MRI, a crucial part of the health check needed for certification. If he removes the implant, which he has had since childhood, he will no longer be able to hear Deyanna and their young son.

Keane does not force these issues – such as the hot-button topic of cochlear implants, which also affects Kathy and Michelle – they are simply part of the fabric of these individual lives. Similarly, the filmmaking eschews any distracting theatrics or soapboxing in favour of straightforward talking head interviews, fly-on-the wall footage of the couples and sensitively handled dramatic recreations of key events in John and Agnes’s relationship.

Great care has been taken with the film’s soundscape. An unobtrusive soundtrack by Stephen Shannon complements a full sonic spectrum from sound designer Brendan Rehill, which ranges from complete silence – when Sean removes his hearing aid, for example – to the robotic, electronic sound heard through cochlear implants, the muffled noise of partial hearing, and full sound (subtitles are, of course, used throughout). This is not deployed as a gimmick, rather as a way to immerse the viewer as fully as possible into the deaf experience.

This commitment to authenticity extends to the making of the film, which fostered a sign-language production environment, employed a deaf and hearing crew, and offered training and mentorship opportunities for up-and-coming deaf filmmakers. In this way, and much like its subjects, A Quiet Love takes a proactive and pragmatic approach to the issue of representation, and the importance of accessibility and diverse storytelling.