The first trailer for Being Heumann has arrived, offering the clearest look yet at Oscar-winning CODA filmmaker Siân Heder’s next feature as it prepares to open the Toronto International Film Festival.
🎬 Watch the Trailer
The film centers on Judy Heumann, the late disability rights leader whose decades of activism helped reshape American law, education, transportation and public life. Based on Heumann’s memoir Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, the trailer frames her story not as a conventional triumph-over-adversity drama, but as a political coming-of-age story about a woman who refused to accept a society built to exclude her.
For Heder, the project arrives with immediate scrutiny. CODA, her 2021 breakout, became a landmark awards-season success after winning the Oscar for best picture and best adapted screenplay, while also helping push conversations about Deaf representation, casting and accessibility deeper into the center of the industry. Being Heumann now places Heder once again in the arena of disability-centered storytelling, but on a broader historical and political canvas.
The trailer appears to emphasize the collision between intimate biography and national movement-building. Heumann, who contracted polio as a child and used a wheelchair, was repeatedly told that public institutions were not designed for her participation. She went on to challenge those systems directly, including through protests that became pivotal in the fight for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a key civil rights protection prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability in federally funded programs.
That history gives the film a significance beyond a prestige festival slot. Disability rights have often been treated by Hollywood as background texture, inspirational metaphor or awards-friendly sentiment. Heumann’s life demands a different lens: activism as strategy, protest as necessity and access as a civil right rather than a matter of charity. If Being Heumann lands with audiences, it could deepen an industry conversation that remains unfinished even after recent gains in representation.
Opening TIFF is a major vote of confidence. The Toronto festival has long served as a launchpad for awards contenders and audience-driven prestige titles, with its opening night selection carrying symbolic weight for international buyers, critics and Academy voters. A prime position at TIFF signals that the film is being introduced not merely as a biopic, but as one of the season’s most visible conversation starters.
It also places Heder in a complicated but potentially powerful follow-up position. After CODA, expectations are unusually high. The Apple-released drama was embraced for its warmth and crowd-pleasing accessibility, but also generated debate about how Hollywood approaches stories rooted in marginalized communities. With Being Heumann, Heder is stepping into a story that requires both emotional clarity and political rigor, particularly because Heumann’s impact extended far beyond any single personal milestone.
Heumann, who died in 2023, was already familiar to many viewers through the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp, where she emerged as one of the central figures in the modern disability rights movement. Being Heumann has the opportunity to expand that recognition for a wider audience, dramatizing the personal stakes behind policy battles that continue to affect millions of people.
The timing is notable. Studios, streamers and festivals are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that inclusion is not limited to casting announcements or awards campaigns. Accessibility on sets, in theaters, at premieres and within film narratives has become a more visible measure of whether the business is actually changing. A high-profile film about Heumann opening one of the world’s most important festivals will inevitably put those questions back in the spotlight.
For the entertainment industry, the trailer’s arrival also underscores a broader shift in the market for issue-driven dramas. Audiences have shown an appetite for films that combine emotional storytelling with social history, particularly when anchored by a filmmaker with a proven ability to translate specific community experiences into widely resonant cinema. That was central to CODA’s rise, and it will likely shape how Being Heumann is positioned through the fall.
The challenge will be avoiding the familiar traps of the biographical drama. Heumann’s story is not simply about individual perseverance; it is about collective action, legal change and the refusal of disabled people to be treated as invisible. The trailer suggests the film is leaning into that tension, presenting access not as a personal accommodation, but as a public demand.
What Happens Next
Being Heumann will make its festival bow as TIFF’s opening-night film, where early critical response will help determine its awards-season trajectory and commercial prospects. Expect distributors, campaign strategists and advocacy groups to watch closely as the film moves from first-look enthusiasm to festival scrutiny.
If the movie connects in Toronto, Heder could have another major awards player on her hands — and Hollywood may have a new test case for how disability stories are told, marketed and supported at the highest levels of the business.