HEALING HANDS | Omeleto

A young boy seeks healing. Jonah is a young boy who uses hearing aids to improve his hearing. But the aids are not working as well, and the loss of hearing is affecting his schooling. His teacher recommends that he learn sign language. But his parents still have hopes of healing him completely. They take him to a church to be healed by faith. Jordan wants to believe as much as his parents. But as he goes through the healing, he discovers his understanding of what it means to be "complete" has changed. Directed and written by Jordan Ochel, this tender, empathetic short drama has the gift of clarity in its portrait of a little boy coming to terms with himself. Told with a luminous, composed visual naturalism, it has a sure-handed focus and sensitivity in how the storytelling immerses us in Jonah's world and subjectivity, and a respect for how he and his family approach Jonah's journey from denial to acceptance. Jonah is a young boy who is losing his hearing, and young performer Alexander Campos III conveys an innate sweetness and innocence, as well as his inner worries and anxieties about not being enough because of his hearing loss. Like most children, he wants to please. He wants to please his teacher, who wants him to share a brochure about learning sign language with his parents. But he especially wants to please his parents, who hope their faith can achieve a miracle and who perhaps unconsciously convey that something is broken with Jonah. Loving and well-meaning, they take Jonah to a preacher they believe has the power to heal their child. Unlike the gentle naturalism of Jonah at school or in his home, the encounter between the healer and Jonah has a feeling of saturated color and shadowy isolation, almost as if it exists in a realm of its own. It's a powerful scene, one that feels almost surreal with its well-staged moments of drama and awe, as well as its underlying belief that this healing is for the "defective." Jonah himself seems to hope that something miraculous can happen. But when his aides are ripped away, he's discombobulated and disoriented, and he realizes nothing has changed for him, leading to the film's turning point. The shift happens not from the healing encounter, but from Jonah's moments of honesty and vulnerability with his parents, who perhaps must face the truth of their son's hearing and what he truly needs to thrive. Through its emotional intimacy and gentle clarity of purpose, HEALING HANDS -- based on the writer-director's own personal experiences -- conveys how it feels to be deaf or hard-of-hearing in a world that sees those conditions as a weakness or a defect. But in this world, Jonah finally finds understanding, as well as a language of his own. Most of all, he finds the sense that he isn't broken or in need of repair or fixing -- he is complete as he is. HEALING HANDS. Courtesy of Jordan Ochel at https://facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579422624555.