TIFF 2026: BEING HEUMANN IS WARM, FUNNY AND STILL PLENTY ANGRY

TIFF kicked off its 51st edition Thursday night with the world premiere of Being Heumann, Siân Heder’s first film since CODA. And if you’re going to kick off 11 days of movies with a packed Toronto crowd, you could do a lot worse than a story about more than 100 people taking over a federal building and refusing to leave until somebody in charge does their damn job.

Because that’s the thing about movements: they’re made up of people. People who flirt, argue, get tired, get pissed off, make each other laugh and occasionally get on each other’s last nerve. Being Heumann is as much about a movement as it is about humans.

Starring British actress Ruth Madeley as disability-rights activist Judith Heumann, Being Heumann wastes no time putting Judy in the middle of a busy New York City street. She doesn’t really have a choice. A wheelchair user for most of her life after contracting polio as a toddler, Heumann grows up in a world simply not built for her. Before she becomes the woman eventually known as the “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement,” she has to figure out how the hell she’s supposed to get around it.

As a child, Judy is denied entry to school because officials consider her wheelchair a “fire hazard.” As an adult, she’s denied a teaching license and sues for the right to teach. Then, in 1977, when the federal government drags its feet on regulations enforcing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Judy and more than 100 disabled activists take over a San Francisco federal building and refuse to leave. Very much a “fine, we’ll come to you” situation.

Mark Ruffalo is cast here as Joseph Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. He’s the guy who needs to sign the meaningful regulations that would put Section 504 into actual action. And, for most of the movie, he simply won't do it.

Judy, meanwhile, is stubborn, impatient and completely committed to the cause. She can rally a room and piss one off just as quickly. She’s prickly, brash and deeply set in her ways, sometimes so certain she knows the right way forward that she forgets everyone else in the room has opinions too. A lot of the movie is Judy figuring out when to push, when to listen and when being convinced you’re right isn’t the same thing as convincing everyone else.

The San Francisco occupation is where Being Heumann gets especially fun. The building basically becomes its own tiny society as protesters organize meals, negotiate with officials, flirt (there’s a “sex tent” in one room, which is pretty much what it sounds like), fight, joke around and keep asking the increasingly important question: Okay, how long can we actually keep doing this?

And the movie’s genuinely funny. Put more than 100 people in one building for days on end and apparently you get political strategy, sexual tension and the occasional logistical nightmare. There’s something wonderfully chaotic about watching everyone try to force the federal government to act while also dealing with the basic reality of having to live together.

Heder has been pretty clear about what she wanted from her CODA follow-up. “It was important to me that the film not feel like ‘eat your spinach’ or that it was not there to educate people on something important that they should know about,” she said. “What I pitched to Apple is ‘I want to make Dog Day Afternoon with disabled people.’”

Mission accomplished. It’s real history, but it’s also rousing, entertaining and incredibly easy to get swept up in.