DocEdge Film Festival 2025 – ‘A Quiet Love’ – Review
The 2025 DocEdge Film Festival has served up a remarkable slate of moving, provocative cinema, but few titles have struck such a heartfelt emotional chord as Garry Keane’s A Quiet Love; a documentary that lives up to its name in the most beautiful and profound way. This is a film that doesn’t shout, but instead signs, speaks through the soul, and wraps around your heart like a warm embrace.
In this intimate film, three Deaf couples share their remarkable love stories through Irish Sign Language: a decades-long forbidden romance across a religious divide, an LGBTQI+ couple navigating parenthood with Deaf and hearing children, and a Deaf boxer and his hearing partner facing a life-altering choice.
Acclaimed Irish documentarian Garry Keane (Gaza, The Game) steps into deeply personal territory with A Quiet Love, which invites audiences into the private, resilient, and deeply human lives of three deaf couples across Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and the UK. What unfolds is an intimate and soul-stirring meditation on love, not as a dramatic gesture, but as a shared language that transcends sound, and speaks through action, eye contact, devotion, and fierce emotional honesty.
Told entirely through Irish Sign Language (ISL) with no spoken dialogue, A Quiet Love is an immersive, sensory experience, and it’s unlike anything you’ve seen before. The absence of speech draws you in, forcing a deeper kind of listening. Your eyes become your ears. Your heart becomes the translator. This isn’t just a documentary — it’s a shared experience of empathy.
Keane follows three couples at very different stages of life, and their stories are woven together with grace and care. There’s John and Agnes, an older couple whose enduring bond survived the trauma of The Troubles. Their scenes are rich with history and pain, but also filled with gentle humour and a quiet intimacy that can only be found in a love forged in hardship. Then there’s Kathy and Michelle, a proud LGBT couple raising two children – one deaf, the other with a normal range of hearing — in a world where acceptance is still a battle. Their family dynamic is joyful, emotional, and deeply moving. Finally, we meet Sean, a passionate young boxer with big dreams, and his partner Deyanna, as they navigate the emotional and practical complexities of young love, parenthood, and ambition with a decision that could change their lives forever.
What’s extraordinary about A Quiet Love is not just the access Keane grants us to these lives, but the authenticity with which he allows their truths to unfold. Nothing is staged. Nothing is overly sentimental. These are real people, with real joys and fears and flaws. And yet, through it all, what stands tall is love; not perfect, but powerful. Not loud, but profound.
Visually, the film is tender and poetic. From windswept Irish coastlines to modest family kitchens to the roar of the boxing ring, every frame feels lived-in and full of life. The camera lingers not for spectacle, but for connection: on hands, eyes, smiles, the small but powerful gestures of intimacy.
Beyond exploring the Deaf community with rare authenticity, A Quiet Love also dives deep into Irish identity and how culture and history intersect with disability and love. The legacy of sectarianism, generational trauma, and cultural resilience all play subtle, powerful roles in shaping these couples’ lives. And through it all, Keane shows us how love endures — not in spite of hardship, but because of it.
A Quiet Love is not just a documentary; it’s a cinematic act of empathy. It reminds us that love doesn’t require sound. It requires understanding, compassion, and presence. It’s a film that invites us not to observe, but to feel, to learn, and to connect.
In a year filled with emotional highs, A Quiet Love is one of 2025’s most sincere and uplifting cinematic experiences. It’s a warm, unguarded celebration of love in its most essential form: real, human, and beautifully quiet.
Image: Taskovski Films
