Film festival 2022
Igrani film
Philippines
00:16:08
2021
Logline:
A deaf young woman, whose disability is a post-traumatic repercussion of the corrupt Marcos regime, sneaks out to her childhood home and retrieves her old CD player in an attempt to regain her hearing.
Synopsis:
Martina is a deaf 20-year-old Bulaceña who is hopeful that her hearing would eventually go back to normal. On the day of the 1986 People Power Revolution, she decides that she wants to listen to music again on her old CD player. She manages to sneak out without being caught by her over-protective mother and she bikes her way to their former house where she spent most of her childhood. The place looks unkempt, with cobwebs covering the furniture and everything was in shambles. She goes to open her old room but it is locked. She starts looking around for the key when two unknown voices appear to be communicating with her. Much worse, they seem to be coming from the walls.
At first, Martina tries to ignore the voices but then she realizes one thing. She hears them. Astonished by this, she quickly engages in a conversation with them, forgetting her original quest to find her old CD player, the very one she shared with her father. Time passes and the voices reveal her harbored emotions of grief and false hope. She realizes that the two voices are versions of her former self that seems to be eons away from who she currently is. Overcome by emotion, she throws her fists at the wall. The sound her action made induced flashbacks of her father's murder to replay in her head, vividly hearing the gunshots coming from the guns of unknown armed men thought to be affiliated with the government of the dictator Marcos. As she continues banging on the walls, an old calendar falls and there, she sees the dangling key to her room. She picks it up and asks the voice from the walls but they're gone. She realizes she could not hear anything again and she spirals to desperation.
Amidst the air of hopelessness filling her childhood home, Martina rushes to unlock her old room to see if she has truly lost her hearing again. She sees a chest containing her old disc player, tracks, and a notebook. After inserting a CD into the player and trying to play it, she opens the notebook. She finds a note, written by her late father. Looking at her old room, the time capsule of her principled past, she remembers the old her, the girl who always fought for what is right. She realizes that even if she has not discovered the sound she was looking for, she will never forget the power of her own voice - the same voice that is still within.