“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.
After the screening — which ran with open captions, ASL interpreters and live captioning for the onstage portions — Heder sat for a Q&A with her actors to discuss how they made the film and her critical decision to cast actors with disabilities. Heder’s choice created a massive opportunity for actors like Madeley who has been a wheelchair user since birth.
Madeley already idolized Heumann, known as the “Mother of the Disability Movement” — “She was funny. She was fierce. She was cheeky. She was naughty. She was sexy,” Madeley pointed out.
“That is a gift for any actor to be able to play with all of those different things,” Madeleu continued. “But that was a challenge as well, and I knew the pressure that so many disabled people are waiting to see a character like this on the big screen, myself included.”
The British actress — a BAFTA nominee for “Don’t Take My Baby,” and familiar to others from “Doctor Who” — has been very good in things you may have missed. Here she is the whole ballgame, and she plays Heumann without a single note of the saintly patience that biopics tend to hand their disabled subjects. Madeley’s Judy is funny, tactical, horny and even a little bit of an asshole sometimes. She is passionate about the right things and furious in a way that keeps finding new gears.
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.
The ensemble around Madeley — Michael Patrick Thornton, Russell Harvard, Daniel Durant and a deep bench of disabled performers who describe themselves in the film as “radical crips” — is cast with an authenticity most productions still treat as a “nice-to-have.”
“As disabled kids, you grow up being told like there’s this ceiling that’s made of vibranium that’s always hanging over you, and no matter what you do, you’re not going to be able to break out of this box, and confined to trying to do whatever society thinks that you can do,” said Charlie Rush-Reese, a blind performer who makes his acting debut in the film. “Being part of this project really not only inspired me to continue to chase my dreams and know that event a black kids in Minnesota can grow up to be in a movie like this, but … that [it] would inspire other disabled people to go out and chase their dreams.”
Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo, a decade after he brought “Spotlight” to Toronto, plays the bureaucrat stalling on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act with the weary decency of a man who thinks the math is on his side. While he doesn’t have the role or screen time needed to propel his way into the supporting actor race, if the film gets big enough, you can never count him out.
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.
The ultimate result is, plainly, a crowd-pleaser — the good kind — engineered by someone who knows the difference between manipulating its audience and bringing genuine care and heart to a story. It’s funny while also being inspiring, and specific without being alienating. That matters this weekend for one concrete reason and that’s the People’s Choice Award. Toronto’s audience vote carries more Oscar-season weight than any jury prize, and the pipeline is well-worn — “Nomadland,” “Green Book,” “12 Years a Slave.” If “Being Heumann” takes it, the conversation changes overnight from “Will it play?” to “How far can it go?”
In the Oscars landscape, we can see a few possibilities.
Madeley belongs in the best actress discussion, and a win in Toronto would strengthen her position there. Screenplay is alive as well — Heder and Rebekah Taussig wrote from Heumann’s memoir, “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist and Heder already owns an adapted screenplay Oscar for “CODA.”
The film is a natural for the Academy’s casting category, given the scale and integrity of the ensemble Heder assembled. Add in production design with a 1977 New York, San Francisco and Washington, all rebuilt with period specificity.
And best picture is not out of reach for a movie made by an Oscar-winning director, backed by the studio that won the category the last time she showed up at the big show.
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.
