Siân Heder Brings Disability-Rights History to Screen in ‘Being Heumann’ TIFF Opener

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Siân Heder's "Being Heumann" opened the 51st Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday night, marking the director's first feature since her Oscar-winning "CODA" five years ago. The drama dramatises the true story of disability-rights campaigner Judy Heumann, who in 1977 led a 28-day sit-in at the Federal Building in San Francisco – reportedly the longest occupation of a US federal building in history – that helped force through regulations underpinning what later became the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ruth Madeley takes the lead role as Heumann, with Mark Ruffalo playing the government official she confronts, and the film was funded and released by Apple Original Films.

Heder has said she pitched the project to Heumann not as a conventional biopic but as something closer in spirit to "Dog Day Afternoon" with disabled protagonists, and the finished film opens with an image of Heumann's wheelchair blocked by a New York pavement that lacks a ramp or dropped kerb. Central to Heder's approach, as with her casting of deaf performers including Troy Kotsur in "CODA", was her insistence on hiring disabled actors to play disabled characters, lending the ensemble what reviewers described as a raw, unsentimental energy. The narrative follows the protesters as their improvised sit-in escalates from days into weeks, before their campaign moves on to Washington, D.C. and, ultimately, to the door of the US secretary of health, education and welfare, Joseph Califano. Coverage noted that the production, staged with a much larger cast and budget than "CODA" afforded, allowed Heder to recreate the scale of the real occupation, which at its height involved hundreds of participants.

The Roy Thomson Hall premiere was presented with open captions, ASL interpretation and live captioning for the stage segments, followed by a Q&A in which Madeley spoke about the pressure of portraying a figure known as the "mother of the disability movement", stressing that she wanted to capture Heumann's humour and fierceness rather than a sanitised, saintly version of her. Heder used her introduction to draw a direct line between the events of 1977 and the present day, telling the audience that rights won in that era feel newly precarious and that she had found herself protesting on the streets this year without always being sure it would make a difference, before describing the film as a testament to people refusing to remain invisible.

The screening also became a moment for wider political commentary at a festival opening under the shadow of the trade dispute between the United States and Canada. Toronto's mayor, Olivia Chow, addressed the audience and, without naming Donald Trump directly, referred to his recent move to rename part of the US-Canada border region as "Lake America", drawing applause when she insisted the city's waterfront would remain Lake Ontario. Organisers and reporters noted that the ongoing tariff dispute, which affects a large share of Canadian film and television exports to the US market, is expected to loom over this year's festival, which continues until 20 September.

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