The Hammer

Matt Hamill was born deaf. His family raised him to speak and read lips rather than to sign, and his grandfather started him wrestling. He becomes a good wrestler at school, always among hearing people. Then he goes to a university for deaf students and runs into a different difficulty: he does not sign, and in his own community he counts as an outsider. He keeps wrestling and becomes the first deaf wrestler to win a national collegiate championship. Oren Kaplan directs the American film; a hundred and eight minutes, with Russell Harvard, who is deaf himself, as Hamill, and Shoshannah Stern and Raymond J. Barry in the cast. The real Matt Hamill later moved into mixed martial arts. Much of the film is played in sign language.