MARLEE MATLIN: NOT ALONE ANYMORE (SXSW 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
In American Sign Language, the words “first,” “only,” and “alone” are similar, save for subtle turns in the wrist or the hand.
In 1987, Marlee Matlin became the first deaf performer to win an Oscar, earning the Best Actress award for Children of a Lesser God. For more than three decades, she was the only deaf actor to win an Oscar—and in navigating Hollywood, she often felt alone.
Recently airing at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, the documentary Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is a revealing and introspective look at this groundbreaking performer but also an insightful one, conveying its interviews and revelations through how Matlin experiences life: with visuals, sign language, and captioning.
Shoshannah Stern, an actor (Supernatural, This Close) making her feature directing debut, also is deaf. Early moments show hearing interviewees testing earpieces so they can hear a sign language interpreter voicing her questions and comments. Meanwhile, deaf participants such as Troy Kotsur (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Matlin’s co-star in 2021’s CODA, mark out their signing space.
Captions in different colors distinguish the speakers’ voices throughout the film. The captions mention sounds within brackets. Stern and editor Sara Newens also incorporate split-screen segments where Matlin and others comment on archive footage, as if in conversation with these moments. It’s an invigorating technique.
Matlin can speak, although she prefers to sign. Now in her fifties, with a lengthy TV and film career, four grown children, and a directing credit (2023’s Accused), she is as effervescent here as in archive footage, with admirable sass.
“I’m very loud. And within myself, my mind is never silent,” she says.
The youngest of three children, Matlin became deaf at eighteen months old, something she says her parents grieved until they died. She fell in love with acting thanks to The Wizard of Oz, making up her own story and dialogue because the film had no captioning at the time. Among her achievements is becoming a notable advocate for inclusion and accessibility—and helping to secure closed captioning on all televised programs.
Along with interviews from friends and colleagues such as actor Henry Winkler and writer-director Aaron Sorkin, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore presents the rudeness and ableism she’s faced, with critics during her Oscar-winning year saying she had the “sympathy vote.” One interviewer even wondered whether she was truly at peace with being deaf or “just that good of an actress.”
Good grief.
Children of a Lesser God was Matlin’s film debut, having previously acted on stage. She was nineteen when she won the role and became involved with her co-star, William Hurt, then thirty-five and known for The Big Chill and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Their chemistry, director Randa Haines recalls, was electric.
Hurt, who died in 2022, was mercurial and physically and emotionally abusive, resenting her swift success, Matlin says. Both also were in the throes of substance abuse. While the biographical details are absorbing, the film also sheds light on language deprivation, where people who are deaf or hearing impaired have inadequate exposure to language or communication. In Matlin’s case, she says she didn’t have the vocabulary to understand or describe some experiences or emotions until she went to rehab, learning there about domestic violence. She broke up with Hurt after that.
Beyond Matlin’s story, the film puts Children of a Lesser God into a broader context, with performers such as Kotsur noting how thrilled they were to see another person who is deaf onscreen but lamenting the lack of stories featuring deaf characters and opportunities for deaf actors. Kotsur took home the 2022 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in part because Matlin insisted other deaf actors be cast in the film. Director Sian Heder recalls the studio was stunned at the time, asking, “Isn’t Marlee the only one?”
Just a visible one, and a fighter. Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is an affirming tale of perseverance, a reminder of needless and insulting limitations, and a rallying cry for so many stories untold.
