​Logline

Following a seven-year long surrogacy process, gay deaf couple Alan and Brian finally brought their hearing twin babies home from India to New York. However, their journey through fatherhood meets new challenges when the increasingly rambunctious kids start screaming "you don't understand me" at them. "LOUD Love" is their story, a documentary about parenting, growth and its occasional hurdles.

​Synopsis

“Loud Love” is a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-abilities, multi-ethnic story, navigated by a gay deaf couple living in New York City. Having faced prejudice and discrimination through their childhoods and formative years, the couple decides to confront life’s challenges head on by having their own CODAs (children of deaf adults)  through international surrogacy. 

Born in the late 1960s, Alan and Brian, while both gay and deaf, had vastly different upbringings. Alan, the former “bad boy” from a typical Long Island Jewish household, received rigorous speech therapy and became “oral” under the supervision of his parents. On the other hand, Brian grew up on a small farm near Vancouver, Canada, where he was encouraged to fully embrace his deaf identity by his hearing family. The two fell in love in an elevator, had a classic Fire Island white wedding, and founded the most successful American Sign Language school in New York City. Their relationship also led Alan to pursue and achieve sobriety. Everything went smoothly until they decided to have children: after trying and failing for seven years in the U.S., they looked overseas and finally brought home a pair of hearing twins from India—Seth and Sela—through surrogacy in 2011 (unfortunately, the Indian government banned international surrogacy shortly after their highly-profiled case). Now the kids, rambunctious and loud, start hurling “you don’t understand me” at their deaf fathers. 
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Are Alan and Brian capable of pushing back against their parents’ doubts and worries by “setting a good example” for their children? Will they pass down the precious but rapidly diminishing deaf cultural heritage to their hearing children? How do their fatherly responsibilities affect the relationship between the bossy and sensitive Alan and the gentle yet resilient Brian? “LOUD Love” tenderly explores the growth of Seth and Sela as hearing CODAs and presents a unique yet relatable tale of fatherhood. ​