A Woman Like Me
2017 · 9m · Denmark
Directed by Isabel Morales Bondy
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
A deafblind Danish woman travels to Nepal to meet another deafblind woman, and the two attempt to communicate through touch-based languages.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects this to be inspirational uplift-porn, but Morales Bondy refuses the easy catharsis—the real subversion is how she lets silence and touch just *be*, without translating them into sentiment for sighted audiences.
A formally precise essay film that situates itself within the documentary tradition of intimate cross-cultural encounter while maintaining rigorous restraint in its formal choices—the editing honors the tactile rather than the visual, a considered decision that deepens the work's philosophical rigor.
The crucial move is the sound design: by privileging the haptic and the ambient over explanatory narration, Morales Bondy makes a nine-minute film feel like an entirely new grammar of filmmaking, and that single commitment to sensory fidelity is what makes this unforgettable.
Reviews
Director Isabel Morales Bondy presents the meeting of these two women without commentary or editorial bias; we are left to our own devices to figure out what's happening by watching these two women attempt to communicate with touch-based languages. Ultimately, the film shows us that spoken or visual language is not always necessary for communication.