Children of a Lesser God

Children of a Lesser God (1986) is an American romantic drama directed by Randa Haines — watch it online on iFILM. William Hurt plays James Leeds, a new teacher at a New England school for the deaf, confident in his methods and used to reaching students no one else could. Sarah Norman (Marlee Matlin) cleans the floors there and refuses to speak aloud to anyone.

James sees a challenge; Sarah sees a man who thinks he knows what she needs better than she does. Adapted from Mark Medoff's Tony Award-winning play, the film builds its central conflict out of that tension rather than softening it — his world is sound, hers is silence, and neither yields easily. Matlin became the youngest Best Actress winner in Oscar history for this role and remains the only deaf performer to have taken that prize. Piper Laurie plays Sarah's mother, navigating her own guilt and distance.

The romance is real, but what lingers is the argument underneath it — about autonomy, about what counts as help, about who gets to define another person's world. Stream Children of a Lesser God (1986) online on iFILM.