すべての映画は「言葉」を使用しているので、ある程度すべての映画は「言葉」についてです。ただし、特に言葉や言葉の力にまつわる映画もあります。ここでは、そのうちの3つを紹介します。
All movies use language, therefore are about language in some way. Some movies, however, are more about language than others. Here I list three of them.
Arrival
Arrival is a 2016 American science fiction movie directed by Denis Villeneuve. The protagonist is a linguist (!!) who collaborates with the military after alien spaceships appeared around the world. Her task is to find a way to communicate with the alien lifeforms that arrived. She has to figure out the grammar of the alien language and can’t give anything for granted.
It is a movie that centres around the key question of how much a language can influence our basic cognitive processes. Despite taking the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis to the extreme, it shows that language affects the way we think, perceive the world around us and live our lives.
For more detail check out The linguistics of Arrival on YouTube!
聲の形 koe no katachi ‘The silent voice’
Koe no katachi (translated in English with ‘The silent voice’) is a 2016 Japanese anime from the directors Yamada Naoko (based on the manga by Ōima Yoshitoki). It follows the story of a young man who decides to reconnect with the deaf girl he bullied when they were kids.
To do so, he learns Japanese Sign Language (JSL, or 手話 shuwa). The exchanges in JSL between the two (which, according to this video, are quite accurate) beautifully portray the rich multimodal semiotic resources that sign languages draw upon.
Il Postino ‘The Postman’
Il postino is a 1994 Italian-French movie directed by Michael Radford and starring Massimo Troisi. It tells the story of an Italian postman and his friendship with the famous poet Pablo Neruda, thanks to whom he learns about the power of words. As the postman learns new words, and new ways of using them, he learns new ways of looking at the world.
I may revisit the post at a later point with an update – any movies I should add to the list? 🎞
The Small Backs of Words 
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