Being Heumann

All screenings will be presented with open captions. ASL interpreters and live captioning will be present for the live onstage components during the screenings on September 10.

Every bit as moving as her Best Picture Oscar winner, CODA, Siân Heder’s Being Heumann tells the remarkable true story of the woman who led a world-changing campaign for accessibility. Judy Heumann rallied a handful, then dozens, then hundreds of ordinary Americans with disabilities to push the US government to live up to its commitments.

The year is 1977. Raised in Brooklyn by German Jewish immigrants, and using a wheelchair since a childhood case of polio, Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) knows it takes grit and tenacity to get things done. So when Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano (Mark Ruffalo) refuses to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the first national civil rights legislation designed to provide protections for people with disabilities, Judy devises a plan to force his hand, beginning with the occupation of a federal building in San Francisco, before going all the way to DC — and Califano’s front door — with a diverse team of self-described “radical crips,” creating solidarity through coalitions of marginalized groups.

The signing of 504 seems an impossible dream — Califano keeps reminding everyone that the Rehabilitation Act’s price tag is in the billions, and that pushing it through will cost him his job — but Judy and her crew have courage and a flair for media attention on their side. Though set in the past, Being Heumann couldn’t be more pertinent to our present. When change can seem overwhelming, we need heroes like Judy to galvanize us. 

Content advisory: coarse language, implied sexual content