New film explores deafness and belonging

A new short film exploring deafness and the concept of belonging is heading for festivals around the world.

Green Grass was made in locations in the Portsmouth and Chichester area by film-maker and Portsmouth University lecturer Aram Atkinson who went to school in Bosham.

Writer-director Aram explained: “It's basically about a university student that does not really fit in and struggles but gets paired with a new girl who happens to be deaf. It is a coming of age story really. She is really proud to be deaf but he has hidden his deafness all his life. It is about him beginning to explore what that means in his life and about him realising some of the choices that he and his family have made.

“The whole film looks at the idea of do you need to fit in neatly into one box or can you still be OK and not really belong anywhere? A large theme in the piece is also about accessibility in education. British Sign Language does not have many signs for the more advanced level subjects especially in science, and so you get decreasing numbers of deaf people going on to university.”

The film was partly made at Chichester College. Stansted House was also used, as were West Wittering and Rowlands Castle and Portsmouth.

The British Film Institute selected the script as one of their annual funded projects in 2023.

“We made this film in 2024, shooting across Chichester and Portsmouth. The film has since been selected at prestigious BAFTA and OSCAR qualifying film festivals across the world including Aesthetica, Bolton International Film Festival, San Jose, Cambridge, and we have just got back from the BAFTA qualifying Rhode Island International Flicker's Film Festival, where it was selected out of over 7,500 entries to be one of the 387 screened films, where I also won first prize for Best Director short film. Technically it's second place behind the grand prize, confusingly, but still exciting.

“We are now submitting the film to the BAFTAs, having qualified through the festival selections, in the hopes of making the short film long list.”

Aram added: “The film is set in the D/deaf community and we made it with cast and crew who were D/deaf, hard of hearing and hearing. We worked with Audrey Cameron in Edinburgh and Project Seagrass in Wales to create six official new BSL signs.

“We also worked with students from Chichester Conservatoire as well as the University of Portsmouth and Kingston on the project.”

Aram is now a lecturer at the University of Portsmouth where he is teaching advanced cinematography and fiction film.

Screening details on Instagram.