Eddie and I

The challenge Maya Shekel and I faced was clear: not teaching sign language, but making the story require it. If the View-sers want to reach Ron, the eight-year-old boy at the center of the experience, they have to sign. The story won't continue until they try. That reframe is what turned a learning tool into something that actually feels like cinema.

From the first conversation with Maya through the New Images Festival win, the development lab in London, and all the way to Venice, my job was to make sure the mission never outpaced the emotion. Character, arc, stakes. The things that make any story work, in any format.

Watching people put on a headset and genuinely communicate with Ron and care about him was one of the more quietly moving things I've been part of.