What Real Events and Source Material Inspired Apple TV’s ‘Being Heumann’?
Apple TV’s ‘Being Heumann’ is the next feature from director Siân Heder, whose earlier film ‘CODA’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The drama centers on disability rights activist Judy Heumann, played by Ruth Madeley, and her leadership of more than a hundred young people who take over the San Francisco Federal building in a fight for equal rights.
Anyone wondering what ‘Being Heumann’ is based on will find the answer in both a published memoir and a documented piece of civil rights history. The film draws on Heumann’s own account of her life and on a protest that actually happened, which gives the story a footing that few awards season dramas can claim.
The Judy Heumann Memoir Behind the Film
The film is based on Heumann’s acclaimed 2020 memoir, subtitled An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, which she wrote with Kristen Joiner. The book gives the movie its title and its point of view, and it is the foundation Heder and her collaborators built the script upon.
Heumann’s own story explains why the material resonated. She used a wheelchair for most of her life after contracting polio at 18 months old, and she was denied the right to attend public school because she was considered a fire hazard. In 1970 she sued the New York Board of Education after being refused a teaching license because of her disability, and she became the first wheelchair user to teach in the city’s public schools.
Her career went well beyond that early victory. She co-founded the civil rights organization Disabled in Action, helped develop and secure passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and held leadership roles under both the Clinton and Obama administrations. One publisher describes the memoir as candid, intimate and irreverent, a tone that the film appears to carry onto the screen.
The 1977 Section 504 Protest at the Center of the Story
The filmmakers chose not to tell Heumann’s whole life from beginning to end. Heder and co-writer Rebekah Taussig concentrate primarily on the 1977 Section 504 sit in in San Francisco rather than a conventional cradle to grave biopic. The narrative is structured around the 28 day occupation Heumann organized at the Department of Health offices.
The stakes were concrete. The protesters refused to leave until the government enforced Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which required federal spaces to become accessible. Mark Ruffalo plays Joseph Califano, the official on the other side of that standoff.
The film also sits in a lineage of earlier storytelling. TheWrap notes that it is based on Heumann’s autobiography and on the sit in protest featured in the 2020 documentary ‘Crip Camp’. KQED reports that photographs from the occupation shown during the end credits make plain that the film’s biggest moments are entirely true.
How Siân Heder Shaped the Adaptation
Heder wrote, directed and produced the film, and she co wrote the screenplay with Taussig. The project was also personal in a practical sense. Heder had been collaborating with Heumann for two years when Heumann unexpectedly passed away in 2023.
Casting reflects the subject matter. Madeley is a BAFTA nominated actor born with spina bifida, and the supporting cast includes Madeline Delp, Dylan O’Brien, Rob Delaney and Daniel Durant. One review observes that recognizable names such as Ruffalo and O’Brien never overshadow Madeley’s performance or the wider movement around her.
The tone is livelier than the history might suggest. In an interview with The Associated Press, Heder described the film as a protest story with a collective spirit, calling it “‘Dog Day Afternoon’ with disabled people.”
Apple TV Release and Critical Reception
The film had its world premiere as the opening night selection of the Toronto International Film Festival, and it later received a Gala presentation at the BFI London Film Festival. It debuts in select theaters on November 6 and arrives globally on Apple TV on Friday, November 13. The running time is 127 minutes.
Early reception has been favorable but not unanimous. Rotten Tomatoes lists an approval rating of 86 percent based on 65 reviews, while Metacritic assigns a score of 63 out of 100 based on 25 critics. Time Out gave it three stars out of five, calling it an admirable but overly familiar disability rights biopic.
Other critics have been warmer about the film’s fidelity to history. KQED argues that the story is packed with real life drama and does not need to embellish. Industry observers cited by Macerkopf already count the film among the promising contenders for the next Oscar nominations. Now that the film is almost in homes, readers who have seen it or read the memoir are welcome to say in the comments whether focusing on the Section 504 occupation, rather than the whole of Heumann’s life, was the right way to adapt her story.
