Rob Savage’s short film “Dawn of the Deaf” is now available on Vimeo and I highly recommend you check it out. I first caught wind of “DotD” when I judged this year’s StokerCon, which was only one of over 100 festivals worldwide including Sundance, BFI London Film Festival, Fright Fest, Sitges, Encounters, Uppsala, Fantasia that DotD has screened and won awards at. Recently, “Dawn of the Deaf” won the Oscar Qualifying Shorts Prize at Sitges and is long-listed for a BAFTA. Pretty exciting stuff!
“Dawn of the Deaf” is an apocalyptic horror short, which was made with the Deaf community in London. The aim was to create a genre film that would connect deaf and hearing audiences in an engaging, thrilling way. As opposed to re-treading the same narratives usually seen when dealing with disability, Savage and his team wanted to create a tense story in which the characters’ “disability” becomes their ultimate advantage over the hearing population.