Voiceless

VOICELESS follows a Joe, a young man with a stammer. When he attends a writing workshop with his friends Catie and Eloise he is confronted with the group’s rejection, his friends’ misunderstanding and his own anxiety. As he embarks on this transformative journey, he discovers not only the power of his voice but also the strength of friendship and the beauty of vulnerability.

VOICELESS is a story of self-realisation and self-actualisation - and also a tale of a young man overcoming social stigma. Based on Matt Hansen’s (writer and lead actor) personal experience, it speaks about the everyday struggle of stammering, the wider misunderstanding of this disability, and the frustration of feeling limited in one’s self-expression.

As a foreigner and non-Native English speaker, I felt so drawn to this story of overcoming judgement within a community, and finding the resilience to pursue my passions and interests while finding my own “voice”.
But ultimately, the reason I feel in love with VOICELESS were the charming and thoroughly likeable characters. Finding the strength to achieve your own potential with a supportive group of friends and an artistic community felt intrinsically relatable to my experience as a filmmaker.

We were eager to not just represent our own individual experiences with stammering, so we collaborated extensively with STAMMA, the leading UK charity focussed on supporting people with a stammer. A thought that stuck with me ever since is “A stammer is not a struggle one overcomes. It is just something everyone else has to sit down and accept”. This mindset led us throughout production, and we are proud that VOICELESS is not a simple story of Joe “solving” his stammer, but making the world around him accept it and listen. As a part of that, it was crucial for me to highlight how even well-intentioned “support” by friends can often be limiting and counter-productive when the breadth of the struggle is not fully comprehended.