A Frontmezzjunkies TIFF film review: Siân Heder brings Judy Heumann’s extraordinary fight for disability rights to the screen, capturing the power of protest and the determination of people who refuse to be ignored.
By Ross
How can stories this extraordinary exist inside the history we think we understand and still remain outside our everyday awareness? That question was very much on my mind as I watched Being Heumann at TIFF, Siân Heder’s deeply engaging account of Judy Heumann and the disability rights movement. Set in 1977, the film follows Heumann as she leads a historic occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building, demanding that the American government honour the promises of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The legislation was intended to provide civil rights protections for people with disabilities, but the regulations needed to make those protections meaningful remained unsigned, leaving the very people the law was designed to protect fighting for the most basic forms of access and participation. Heder, who directs and co-writes the screenplay with Rebekah Taussig, brings this remarkable chapter of activist history into vivid focus. The film is beautifully told, with an almost hypnotic momentum as Judy gathers a handful of determined activists, then dozens, then hundreds, into a movement that refuses to accept another official postponement. I found myself completely absorbed in the story, and increasingly astonished by how much of this history I had never fully understood.
“This is Judy Heumann,” she states repeatedly into the phone, forcing her name into the conversation even when it is mostly ignored. Ruth Madeley gives a phenomenal, fiercely committed and wonderfully detailed performance as Heumann, a woman who understands that determination means very little until you put it into action. Her Judy is a formidable combination of intelligence, conviction and persistence, able to galvanize the people around her even when the obstacles seem overwhelming. At one point, she is unceremoniously crowned Queen Judy, mainly because of the firm proclamations she makes for the group at a moment’s notice, whether they are all in agreement or not. Watching her, I kept thinking that General Judy might have been the better title. Mark Ruffalo brings a compelling presence to Joseph Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, whose refusal to sign the regulations becomes the central political obstacle facing the movement. At one point, after Judy takes action, Califano finally demands, “Who is this person?” The question lands because by then Judy Heumann has become impossible for the people in power to ignore. Dylan O’Brien, Rob Delaney and Ray Fisher also contribute to the ensemble surrounding this remarkable campaign, while Heder’s commitment to casting disabled actors gives the film an authenticity and a collective presence that feels essential to the story being told. But Madeley remains the driving force, making Judy’s determination feel immediate, infectious and entirely earned.
The film centres on the 28-day occupation of the federal building, when Heumann and a growing group of activists demanded meaningful regulations for Section 504. What makes the details so astonishing is how concrete the barriers become. These are not abstract discussions about policy or bureaucratic language. They are people who cannot enter buildings, access services, or participate fully in the society that claims to offer them equal opportunity. When police attempt to arrest the protesters, the realization comes that even the jails are inaccessible. “You are not the problem, the stairs are the problem,” becomes one of the film’s clearest expressions of the movement’s purpose. Those physical barriers expose a much larger system that tells disabled people they can participate in the American dream while surrounding them with obstacles to actually living within it. Heder understands the power of making those obstacles visible, and the film’s immersive framing, supported by Jamie Ramsay’s cinematography, draws us into the experience of the people demanding change. We are drawn into their perspective, recognizing the practical indignities that have been accepted as ordinary and understanding why waiting patiently for someone else to act was never going to be enough.
The U-Haul truck scene at the airport and the journey that follows into Washington, D.C. became one of the film’s most affecting sequences for me. We have become accustomed to seeing ramps, elevators, sloped curbs, accessible vehicles, and other signs of accessibility in our daily lives. Those things did not simply appear. People fought for them. I found myself thinking about my own experience of protest in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was in my late twenties and driving to Sacramento to demonstrate for gay rights. My little Suzuki Samurai was the perfect vehicle for filling to overflowing with fellow protesters, signs and slogans. People stood tall and defiant in the back as we made our way through the streets of Los Angeles and Sacramento. I remember the infectious feeling of unity, the excitement of being part of something larger than myself, and the conviction that we were demanding something that should never have been in question. Watching the activists in this film, though, I was acutely aware of the far greater barriers they faced and the much higher stakes involved in their fight.
Heumann and the activists around her were willing to occupy buildings, put their health at risk, travel across the country, attract media attention, and place themselves directly in the path of government opposition because they understood that waiting politely for change could mean waiting forever. When Heumann wheels herself out in front of traffic, demanding to be seen and listened to, the force of that moment is impossible to miss. John P. Goldsmith’s production design helps establish the physical scale and lived-in environments of the occupation, while the film’s attention to the spaces the activists must navigate keeps the larger political struggle grounded in everyday experience. Heder gives the campaign a strong sense of movement and solidarity, showing how a group of people with different experiences and circumstances can find common purpose, build enormous collective pressure and force those in power to pay attention.
There are moments when Being Heumann leans into the familiar conventions of the inspirational biographical drama, and some of its crowd-pleasing touches make the directorial approach feel a little too safe for a movement whose radical determination deserved a grittier exploration. The film occasionally smooths out the edges of the struggle, and I would have welcomed more time spent examining the full complexity of the political resistance and the activists’ experiences. Yet once we are drawn into the movement, it is difficult not to become completely invested in Judy’s purpose. She becomes our ride-or-die leader, someone whose determination makes it impossible to sit comfortably on the sidelines. Heder’s screenplay, developed with Taussig from the story of Heumann and her co-written memoir with Kristen Joiner, gives the campaign a clear narrative drive, while Madeley’s performance ensures that the emotional and political stakes never feel detached from the woman leading it. This is an essential chapter of activist history, and even when the filmmaking takes a familiar route, the story itself has a remarkable power.
That is where Being Heumann becomes something more than an inspirational historical drama. The story is inspirational, certainly, but the film understands that inspiration carries a responsibility. Judy Heumann did not fight simply so people could admire her courage decades later. She fought because people were being denied the ability to live fully and participate equally. Heder’s film asks us to take that history into the present and consider what we do when we encounter the next obstacle, the next exclusion, the next injustice that somebody has decided is simply the way things are. And to act. Being Heumann takes history out of the distance of headlines and places these people directly in front of us, people whose lives have been shaped by circumstances many of us may know only in the broadest sense. Their determination made me want to know more, to pay closer attention, and to recognize that sometimes the first thing we can do when confronted with stories like these is simply refuse to look away. And then do something to affect change, within ourselves and the world around us.
