Unspeakable 2006

Directed by John Paskievich

The film examines the nature, history and treatment of stuttering, a speech impediment that affects about 1% of the world’s population, regardless of language, class or ethnicity. John Paskievich, the film’s director, is a person who stutters. He also narrates and is an active participant in the film. His stories and the stories of others in the film are poignant, funny, angry and courageous, providing eloquent testimony to what it means to live in what the poet WH Auden called “the tower of stutter.” According to Paskievich, “the film is a call for liberation, not from stuttering, but from the ignorance and stigma that surround it.”