“Being Heumann” opens on a New York sidewalk that doesn’t allow Judy Heumann to climb it. There’s no curb cut or ramp. Just a woman and her wheelchair. Director Siân Heder holds on it — and then Judy gives the middle finger. And it immediately hooks the viewer in for the ride.
At least that was the case for the audience inside Roy Thomson Hall, who sat with rapt attention as Heder’s film opened the 51st Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday night. The film is Heder’s first since “CODA,” the Sundance sensation which went on to win the best picture Oscar, a first for Apple Original Films and any streaming company. It chronicles the true story of how Heumann and her motley crew of activists fought for equal rights by waging a 28-day sit-in protest that helped pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
”I don’t want to make a biopic about you. I want to make ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ with disabled people,” Heder said she told Heumann when she pitched herself to direct the project.
The movie also shows what Heder can do with real money behind her. “CODA” was a small film about a small town, shot at the scale its budget allowed and beloved for its intimacy. “Being Heumann” is a period piece with a sprawling cast — the activists’ 28-day occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building, the longest occupation of a federal building in U.S. history, was staged with hundreds of people. From there, they bring their fight to Washington, D.C. and, finally, to secretary Joseph Califano’s front door. Apple funded the film, and Heder makes the leap look easy. Give a good director resources and you find out what she was doing without them.
Dylan O’Brien, Rob Delaney and Ray Fisher round out the cast.
“My first thought when I signed up for the project was, ‘This would be such a fucking punk rock summer to be a part of,’” said O’Brien, who plays a local reporter who embeds himself with the activists and publicizes their efforts. But, making the movie was more meaningful than he anticipated. “Evan did not necessarily realize how galvanized he would be along with them, and that reflects my experience.”
The film allows Heder to do something American movies rarely do. Without spoiling where the film goes, “Being Heumann” treats its disabled characters as full romantic and sexual beings: for example, there’s an intimate scene between a disabled performer and a nondisabled one that is played for tenderness and desire, not a learning lesson.
Moreover, the film reinforces that that disability rights movement was never just about ramps and regulations for one community. It is, and has always been, about seeing this minority group as people who have the right to be wanted and not as a set of limitations someone else can see from across a room.
In the Oscars landscape, we can see a few possibilities.
The campaign won’t have to manufacture that poignancy. The real Heumann died in 2023, having spent a lifetime making the country hold a door it kept trying to close. That message could be a strong factor.
”Being Heumann” debuts in theaters on Nov. 6 before streaming on Apple TV.
