Skyscrapers glinting in oily black puddles, shots of a gray sky gathering in the crevices of New York city tarmac, all accompanied by the purr of an electric wheelchair; this is the unexpected introduction to Sian Heder’s Being Heumann, a follow-up to her Best Picture winner CODA. Heder uses these disorienting early shots to put audiences in the chair of her protagonist, the fiery, independent, real-life activist Judy Heumann. Judy races across sidewalks, determinedly avoiding the crossfire of busy traffic and unhelpful raised curbs. It is an efficient way of capturing a real problem many of us have never seriously reckoned with. Unfortunately, Heder’s lens never again captures that early poignancy (although it comes close once or twice), instead retreating to more comfortable historical biopic territory.
The real Heumann, alongside her like-minded peers, secured equal opportunities for disabled Americans in work and education, ensuring that public spaces would have to be built with accessibility in mind. Being Heumann follows the month or so where these men and women occupied a San Francisco government building, sitting in until the decree was ratified federally. These characters (and the activists they’re based on) endured police pushback, state intimidation—often in conjunction—all the while sleeping on makeshift beds pillowed across worn sofa cushions, and freezing their various medications under an air conditioning unit. Heder spotlights these time-consuming adjustments, expressing genuine curiosity about the place where political theory meets real people’s bodies, and how this collision shifts and shrinks depending on whether the body is in a wheelchair, or blind, or deaf.
Directors who choose to pursue political drama must grapple with the contradictions inherent to the genre: How can a biographical story run through with these ideals be both dramatically compelling and emotionally honest? When most leftist organizing is composed of unending discussions, which prompt debates, which prompt decisions, which prompt mundane tasks peppered with brief exciting moments, how do you authentically condense it all into moments worthy of a feature film? It’s obvious through the earnest tone of Heder and Rebekah Taussig’s dialogue, that the filmmakers wholeheartedly believe in the importance of this story, but Being Heumann never manages to answer these relevant questions with any degree of novelty. Group discussions are relatively short, interrupted by some major development (be it the shutting down of phone lines or the likelihood of a bomb threat) or an impassioned speech delivered by Heumann. These obvious dramatic beats awkwardly rewrite the 20-day slog to suit the big screen.
Nowhere is this made-for-streaming blandness more obvious than in its depiction of the Black Panthers. Well-versed with the practical rigors of revolution, the San Francisco chapter of the group shows up with trays of hot food to support the hungry protestors. The police hold them before entering the building. “What do you have in there?” a policeman asks, gesturing to the containers. “Corn, fried chicken, rice…revolution,” a Black Panther member responds. Like so many Hollywood iterations before, Being Heumann gestures towards an emancipatory vision of the world, but can’t embody it, settling for overwrought dialogue instead.
Being Heumann doesn’t reach the heights of its thrilling real-world event, but there’s still plenty to enjoy in its creative rendering of how different disabilities overlap, constrict, and expand any group’s possibilities. Moreover, the cast offers compelling renditions of their real counterparts, led by the fiery, focused Ruth Madeley as Judy. Still, there’s something lacking in its ideas around how real change—painful and radical, not clean and climactic—can happen. Heder makes the mistake of flattening history into entertainment, which means that Being Heumann is less enjoyable than simply reading about reality.
Director: Sian Heder
Writer: Sian Heder, Rebekah Taussig
Starring: Ruth Madeley, Mark Ruffalo, Dylan O’Brien, Rob Delaney, Ray Fisher
Release Date: November 6, 2026; November 13, 2026 (Apple TV)
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