Being Heumann will kick off TIFF

The Venice Film Festival has begun, and next week, TIFF begins. We’re in the fall festival crunch, with Venice, Telluride, and TIFF running concurrently (Telluride is this weekend). The opening night film of TIFF is Being Heumann, Siân Heder’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning film, CODA. Being Heumann is a biopic of disability rights activist Judith Heumann, and a very fun little teaser dropped yesterday.

British actress Ruth Madeley, who has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, stars as Heumann. In the 1960s and 1970s, Heumann became a leader of the disability rights movement. She used a wheelchair following a bout with polio as an infant, and in the 1970s she became the first teacher in New York City to use a wheelchair (there was a big ass lawsuit about it, which settled out of court and resulted in Heumann obtaining her teaching license).

The film looks punchy and fun for a serious topic—the ADA exists but if you’ve ever hung out with someone who uses a wheelchair or mobility aid, the accessibility features offered in most spaces are hardly convenient and are often difficult to navigate. The ADA is a framework, not a solution. Anyway, the teaser makes Judith Heumann look fun and furious. Being Heumann does not look like your average biopic, canonizing a saintly subject. There are still a lot of biopic pits it could fall into, and CODA shows Siân Heder to be a filmmaker fully willing to emotionally manipulate audiences, but I am now very interested in Ruth Madeley’s performance.

The film also stars Mark Ruffalo, who is at the center of a storm over comments he made a couple weeks ago, criticizing Oracle for its ties to the Israeli army. Paramount, which is run by Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s son David, then issued a statement condemning Ruffalo for what they consider to be antisemitic remarks. Ruffalo has also been an outspoken critic of the Paramount/Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

Many people have spoken up in support of Ruffalo, who has always been politically engaged, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out on opening night next week. Being Heumann looks like it’s supposed to be a feel good, rousingly inspirational film, and now one of its cast members is at the center of a controversy. Something to keep an eye on when TIFF kicks off next week.