Toronto film festival opens with disability-rights drama "Being Heumann"

The Toronto International Film Festival opened its 51st edition on Thursday with the world premiere of "Being Heumann," a drama about disability rights activist Judy Heumann from Siân Heder, the writer-director of the Oscar-winning "CODA." The film's debut at Roy Thomson Hall kicked off ten days of screenings that will run through September 20, drawing several hundred thousand attendees to more than 200 features and shorts from dozens of countries.

"Being Heumann" is an Apple Original Films production adapted from Heumann's memoir, "Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist," with a screenplay by Heder and writer Rebekah Taussig. Ruth Madeley, a BAFTA-nominated actress who uses a wheelchair, plays the young Heumann as she organizes and leads a 28-day occupation of a federal building in San Francisco in 1977. Mark Ruffalo plays Joseph Califano, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare who ultimately signed the regulations the protesters were demanding. Dylan O'Brien and Rob Delaney round out a supporting cast that includes several deaf and disabled performers, among them Daniel Durant, Michael Patrick Thornton and Russell Harvard.

The film's TIFF placement was set in July, when festival organizers named it the opening selection alongside two other world premieres, according to an announcement reported at the time. Apple has since set the film's rollout: a limited theatrical run beginning November 6, followed by a global premiere on Apple TV on November 13, according to the studio's official announcement of the film's teaser trailer. It is Heder's first feature since "CODA," which in 2022 became the first film with a predominantly deaf cast to win the best picture Oscar, and the first best picture winner for a streaming service, a result Apple called a historic Academy Awards win in its own newsroom statement at the time. This year's TIFF runs 11 days, its 51st edition, with programming split across roughly a dozen venues in downtown Toronto.

How we got here

The film dramatizes a specific and well-documented episode in American civil rights history: the Section 504 sit-in of April 1977, when disabled activists occupied the San Francisco offices of the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare for 28 days, the longest occupation of a federal building in U.S. history at that point. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 had barred discrimination against disabled people by any program receiving federal funds, but the Nixon, Ford and early Carter administrations had all declined to issue the regulations needed to enforce it. Heumann, then a young activist who had already sued the New York City school system after being denied a teaching license because she used a wheelchair, helped organize protesters in more than a dozen cities; the San Francisco sit-in was the one that held. Califano signed the regulations on April 28, 1977, a victory that predated the Americans with Disabilities Act by thirteen years and that disability historians regard as the movement's founding moment. Heumann went on to serve as a disability rights adviser in the Clinton and Obama administrations and as an adviser at the World Bank before her death in 2023; her earlier life and organizing were also chronicled in the Netflix documentary "Crip Camp." Her memoir and legacy are maintained through her foundation's website, which continues to promote her writing and advocacy work.

Heumann herself had contracted polio as an infant and used a wheelchair from early childhood. She was denied a teaching license by the New York City Board of Education in 1970 on the grounds that she posed a fire hazard, a decision she successfully challenged in court, and she later helped found the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, one of the first organizations to argue that disabled people should direct their own care and housing rather than live in institutions. That philosophy, often called the independent living movement, underpinned the demands activists brought to the 1977 sit-in and later shaped the drafting of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The film compresses this history into the weeks of the occupation itself, using the standoff with Califano's department as its central dramatic engine.

Who is affected

The production made a point of casting disabled actors in speaking and non-speaking roles alike, a practice that disability advocates have pushed studios to adopt more consistently since "CODA." Among those cast was Taylor Lindsay-Noel, a 32-year-old Toronto disability rights advocate and accessibility content creator known online as Access by Tay, who took a non-speaking role as one of the sit-in's protesters. Lindsay-Noel, who was paralyzed from the chest down at 14 after a gymnastics accident, is one of several disabled Toronto residents who appeared in the film, work she has described as a rare chance to be part of a production built around, rather than despite, the needs of its disabled cast. The casting choices extend beyond the film itself: TIFF programmers have said accessibility is a throughline across several of this year's selections, and festival venues have expanded wheelchair seating and audio-description offerings for opening week screenings.

The premiere also lands the story with a wider audience than the activist community that has long championed Heumann's work. Apple's theatrical and streaming rollout, paired with a high-profile awards-season festival launch, puts a decades-old civil rights campaign in front of mainstream moviegoers roughly a year and a half before the fiftieth anniversary of the sit-in itself.

The production also carries weight for an industry that has been slow to put disabled performers on screen relative to their share of the population. Advocacy groups that track representation have repeatedly found that disabled characters remain a small fraction of speaking roles in major studio releases, and that those roles are frequently played by non-disabled actors. "Being Heumann" was cast with the opposite approach, filling not only its lead role but numerous supporting and background parts with disabled actors and community members such as Lindsay-Noel, a choice producers and Heder have described as central to the production rather than incidental to it. Disability rights organizations covering this year's festival have flagged the film, alongside several other TIFF selections, as part of a broader shift in how film financiers are willing to greenlight stories centered on disabled characters and led by disabled talent.

Reaction

TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey, who selected the film to open the festival, framed the choice as both an artistic and civic one.

"We're thrilled to open this year's festival with Siân Heder's inspiring follow-up to her Oscar-winning CODA. Being Heumann features an electric performance from Ruth Madeley in the story of Judy Heumann, a world-changing advocate for accessibility."

Bailey has also said the film's subject resonated with him personally, calling it "ultimately... a civil rights story" about people trying to make the world better. Lindsay-Noel, for her part, described working with Heder as validating: the director, she said, "made everyone feel special no matter if their roles were big or small," while also acknowledging that disabled performers still face outsized logistical hurdles simply to get to set, noting that "so much pre-work goes into just getting out."

The opening also arrived against a tense industry backdrop. This year's TIFF is unfolding amid U.S.-Canada friction over streaming and production rules, with American negotiators pushing back on Canadian content requirements even as the White House has backed new federal tax incentives to keep more filming in the United States. Canadian officials, including Telefilm Canada, have responded by emphasizing international co-production treaties, part of the wider context shaping this year's festival opening, alongside a new industry marketplace TIFF launched for the first time this year.

What happens next

TIFF continues through September 20 with galas for titles including the Cannes Palme d'Or winner "Fjord," starring Sebastian Stan, along with new films featuring Jodie Comer and Naomi Watts. "Being Heumann" itself will screen publicly at the festival before Apple's limited theatrical release on November 6 and its global streaming debut on Apple TV a week later, on November 13. Given Heder's history with the Academy — three Oscars for "CODA," including best picture — the film is expected to be an early fixture of awards-season conversation, with distributors and critics watching whether Madeley's performance and the ensemble of disabled actors around her can translate festival enthusiasm into nominations recognition later this winter.