For more than six decades, John and Agnes Carberry have shared a love story that quietly defied the divisions of where they grew up.
Long before integrated education was established in Northern Ireland, a school in Jordanstown provided a rare chance for Catholic and Protestant deaf children to learn side by side.
“Nowadays it’s become quite topical, whereas we were doing it before the rest of Northern Ireland was,” John remarked. “There were never bad words against each other or any sort of animosity because of religion. It just didn’t exist in the deaf community.”
John is from a Catholic background and grew up in west Belfast, while Agnes is from a Protestant background, hailing from the Silent Valley.
The couple’s cross-community love story is now one of three being shared with international audiences through the award-winning documentary A Quiet Love, Ireland’s first feature film in Irish Sign Language (ISL).