Oscar Contender ‘Audible’ Offers Unique Coming-of-Age Story

variety.com:

Tim Gray Senior Vice President“Audible,” an Oscar nominee for documentary short, features a winning combination: great filmmaking and a great subject matter.Director Matt Ogens had been waiting for 12 years to tell the story about the Maryland School for the Deaf and their championship football team.

However, he doesn’t consider it a sports documentary: “It’s a coming-of-age story and some of it is unique, some of it is universal.”However, he had trouble getting funding: “We had a lot of doors shut in our faces by people thinking there wasn’t an audience for this.”During that time, Ogens would check in regularly with people at the school when he visited his family in the Maryland-D.C.

area. Though the 12 years of dead ends were frustrating, he says “I’m glad it took so long; I wouldn’t have met Amaree and his friends.” He’s referring to a charismatic high school senior, Amaree McKenstry-Hall, a player on the football team who is at the center of “Audible,” along with his close circle of friends.“I never wanted an observational film, looking at a situation from a distance,” Ogens says. “I wanted to tell the story from the point of view of Amaree and his friends, to tell the story they wanted to tell, to amplify their voices.

I was a liaison and I knew from Day One that this was going to be an immersive experience.”Though Amaree and some of his circle are disconnected from their families — Amaree’s father left when the boy lost his hearing as a toddler, and the remaining relatives showed little interest in learning ASL — the film shows how the school creates a community where all races mix, and where gay, straight and trans students accept each other and feel safe.“I think that’s a testament to the deaf community, the.