Oscar-winning CODA director Sian Heder argues Being Heumann, her new film about disability rights that opened the 51st Toronto International Film Festival, is timely because “collective action matters.”
“We are living in a time when a lot of groups of people are getting left behind,” Heder told festivalgoers at the Roy Thomson Hall on Thursday night. “The rights that many people fought for in the 1970s are under threat, and it is easy to feel helpless,” she added before a local audience showing a groundswell of patriotism amid Donald Trump’s cross-border trade and tariffs war with Canada.
“I have been out on street with a cardboard sign many times this year, and thought does this even matter, does this protest matter. There’s so many battles on so many battles, it’s hard to know where to fight,” Heder said. She spoke to introduce Being Heumann, her Ruth Madeley-starring drama about protest leader Judy Heumman, who led a historic 1977 campaign that launched the disability-rights revolution in the U.S., which eventually led to the Americans With Disabilities Act.
“This film is what happens when people refused to be invisible,” Heder added before a post-premiere Q&A saw her bring onto the stage her cast of disability actors that played disabled people in her crowd-pleasing movie for Apple Original Films.
