Global audiences have already had a chance to see Emilio Insolera in the Netflix drama Feel My Voice, about a shy teenager with a gift for singing, since it bowed on April 3.
But they won’t have heard the Italian actor and film producer’s actual voice — except for two scenes where he yells — as Insolera is deaf. Relying on sign language, in Feel My Voice he plays the deaf father of a hearing daughter with a passion for singing in the Italian-language remake of La Famille Bélier, which was later adapted into CODA, the Academy Award–winning film.
Being seen and heard is important for Insolera, as he can both speak and sign in four languages: Spanish, Italian, English and Japanese. So he sees great creative opportunity for film and TV directors that allow him to be heard on camera. “Imagine a film character who speaks four signed languages and four spoken languages. It would break the deaf stereotype. What stories we have to share, and what effect would such a character have on the people around him? Would he be seen as a hero, a villain, or perhaps both?” he ventures.
All Insolera — who has worked in movies for Universal Pictures, Disney, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox alongside Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz and Jacob Elordi — asks is filmmakers bring his true, authentic voice to the screen. “Audiences should become familiar with the full range of voices, just as they already see a wide range of signing abilities. It’s important to embrace that diversity rather than standardize or hide it and to allow audiences to become comfortable with it and recognize it as part of natural human variation,” he adds.
Of course, films going back to Oscar winner Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God, Wonderstruck and Sound of Metal have featured deaf actors. But CODA, thanks to its Oscars success, arguably did more than any other movie to break down doors for deaf actors worldwide.
“The film has also become an important reference point for Laura Santarelli, a cultural mediator involved in our production, in advocating for authentic representation and encouraging the Italian production team to cast deaf actors, something they were initially hesitant to embrace,” Insolera explained. In Feel My Voice, from director Luca Ribuoli, he plays Alessandro Musso, who has been deaf since birth and is a father to Eletta (Sarah Toscano), a shy teenager who can hear and discovers that she has an extraordinary singing voice.
When her singing teacher (Serena Rossi) encourages her to audition for a prestigious music school, her dream begins to come true but at a price: leaving behind her father and the rest of her family, for whom she alone speaks to the outside world. Insolera says director Ribuoli urged him to look beyond CODA to the original The Bélier Family drama as he fashioned his father character. Ultimately, that meant not being an alpha male.
“After revisiting both previous films, I tried to extract the tenderness of the father from the first version, while also incorporating the coarse language and roughness typical of the father in the second adaptation. Alongside those elements, I had to ensure that my character maintained a limited vocabulary, yet was still driven by a strong sense of purpose,” he recalled. Besides having to grow a beard, Insolera, a city slicker who has lived in Buenos Aires, New York City, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Osaka, Berlin and now Milan, had to play a rural farmer.
So he channeled his Italian childhood in rural Sicily for direction. “It was a very local and deeply Italian environment, and that is exactly what I had to reconnect with for the role. I also drew on my Sicilian father’s attitude and way of being, which helped further shape the character. Since the character in the film comes from a small village in Piedmont, I also had to adapt to a northern Italian sensibility and personality, building a new identity and creating a figure that is unique in his own way,” Insolera recounted.
Another adjustment on set was with his daughter played by Toscano tending to follow his hands as Insolera communicated using sign language, rather than look into his eyes. “Well, our conversations in sign language were mainly technical and memorized, almost like recalling numbers in sequence. There was very little room for improvisation. On top of that, her facial expressions were sometimes not fully in sync with every sign I used. There were moments I felt like I was just talking to myself,” he recalled of their first days opposite one another on camera.
The movie’s editors cleaned up those early miscues and Insolera and Toscano eventually got far more connected as the cameras rolled. “During the final days of shooting, she (Toscano) seemed to pick it up naturally, but by then the production was already coming to an end,” he added.
Insolera is encouraged by how Hollywood has finally embraced deaf actors as “complex human beings,” rather than just people with a disability. “In films like 355 and Black Rabbit, supporting deaf characters take on darker or more morally ambiguous roles, including villains. In Pretty Lethal, one of the ballerinas is deaf and becomes trapped in a dangerous survival situation. We need to see more representation like this and especially more substantial roles, greater visibility and richer dialogue for deaf characters,” he argued.
And what does Hollywood get wrong? “The roles given to deaf characters often place them alone in environments filled with hearing people. It would be great to include two or three deaf characters instead, that’s where the magic of sign language, conversation, and natural improvisation truly comes alive. Seeing deaf characters surrounded only by hearing people who have just learned sign language is often neither convincing nor particularly engaging,” he argued.
Insolera would also like to see film producers hire deaf actors who are more skilled in their signing style or fluency. “Many of the actors I see are not native sign language users, and it is unfortunate that multimillion-dollar productions still cast talent without giving enough attention to that level of authenticity,” he adds.
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