Variety's review covers "Being Huemann," director Siân Heder's first feature since "CODA," which dramatises the 1977 sit-in that helped launch the American disability-rights movement. The film, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival, stars Ruth Madeley as activist Judy Heumann and Mark Ruffalo as the official she confronts, and the critic praises it as bold and structurally inventive, avoiding the self-congratulatory tone common to films about past civil-rights struggles.

The film centres on a 21-day occupation of a Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco, staged to pressure the US government into enforcing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which barred discrimination against disabled people in federally funded programmes. It features an ensemble of disabled actors playing disabled characters, echoing Heder's approach in "CODA" with deaf performers such as Troy Kotsur, and the reviewer highlights how the film deliberately confronts and then dismantles the audience's instinct to define characters solely by their disabilities.