In Anna Baumgarten’s new drama Disfluency, Jane “The Brain” fails her final class in college and returns home to lick her wounds. While there, she reconnects with her older sister and childhood friends, helps a single mom learn sign language to better communicate with her deaf son, and studies her friends’ speech patterns to earn extra credit. It might not sound like much, but there’s a lot more going on with Jane that makes Disfluency more than just a typical coming-of-age film. See, Jane experienced a trauma while at school that disrupted her life, just as disfluency is an interruption that disrupts the quality of speech.
Libe Barer has now played Jane twice, once in the 2018 Disfluency short film, and again in Baumgarten’s feature film which is now open in select theaters. Barer, who might be known for her roles in Sneaky Pete and Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Libe delivers a performance that is at times deeply heartbreaking but also hopeful as Jane begins to take the necessary steps to recovery from her trauma, leaning on communication with the people she loves most.
I had the chance to speak with Libe Barer about Disfluency, and we talked about this challenging role, what it’s like to take this character from the short to the big screen. We also talked about her learning of sign language for a key aspect of the film, and what it meant to work alongside her sister, Ariela Barer, who fans might know from Runaways and How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Disfluency is open in select theaters now and begins expanding on January 17th before moving to VOD on January 24th. Check out the trailer below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!