Five years after CODA made history as the first streaming film to win Best Picture, Oscar-winning filmmaker Siân Heder is back with Being Heumann, a rousing, irreverent true story about the woman known as the “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement.” BAFTA nominee Ruth Madeley stars as Judy Heumann, the young activist. Co-written by Heder and Rebekah Taussig from Heumann’s memoir, the film also stars Mark Ruffalo as Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano, alongside Dylan O’Brien and Madeline Delp, and has what Apple calls the largest assortment of disabled actors ever assembled.
The Synopsis
They wouldn’t take Judy Heumann’s phone calls, so she took their building. In 1977, a young disabled woman (Ruth Madeley, “Nightsleeper”) and a scrappy coalition of outsiders decide they’ve had enough. What begins as one impulsive act becomes the longest occupation of a federal building in American history, as hundreds spontaneously seize government offices and refuse to leave until the bureaucrat (Mark Ruffalo. “Spotlight”) takes action. Bringing rebellion in all its forms to the hallowed halls, a movement’s accidental leaders struggle to find their path forward where none has ever been paved for them.
Siân Heder is an Academy Award–winning writer, director and producer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who trained at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. She broke out with her short film Mother, which she made through the AFI Directing Workshop for Women and which was honored at Cannes in the Cinéfondation competition. In television, she wrote for the first three seasons of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, shared a Peabody Award for Men of a Certain Age, and wrote and executive produced Apple TV+’s anthology series Little America. Her feature debut, Tallulah (2016), starring Elliot Page and Allison Janney, premiered at Sundance. Her second feature, CODA (2021), sold to Apple for a record $25 million at Sundance and went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, while Heder won both the Oscar and the BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay. Being Heumann is her first feature since CODA. Next, she’ll write and direct an adaptation of Gabrielle Zevin’s best-selling novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
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Ruth Madeley is a BAFTA-nominated English actor from Westhoughton, Lancashire, who was born with spina bifida and has become one of the leading voices for disability representation on screen. A First Class Honours graduate in English and creative writing from Edge Hill University, she broke out in the 2015 BBC Three drama Don’t Take My Baby, which earned her a BAFTA TV nomination for Best Actress and a place on BAFTA’s Breakthrough Brits list. Russell T Davies reshaped the role of Rosie Lyons around her for his acclaimed 2019 miniseries Years and Years. She went on to play real-life disability activist Barbara Lisicki in Then Barbara Met Alan and Shirley Anne Bingham in Disney+ Doctor Who, and she also appeared in The Rook, The Watch and Nightsleeper. This year, she leads and executive produces the BBC One thriller The Rapture. A longtime fundraiser for the disability charity Whizz-Kidz, she has been its patron since 2019, and she was among the signers of a 2019 open letter urging Hollywood to cast disabled actors in disabled roles. Being Heumann is her first Hollywood leading role, and she has called it “truly the role of a lifetime.” Soon she will appear on the Disability Monologues series.
With the release of the Being Heumann I was connected with Siân Heder and Ruth Madeley via Zoom to discuss the film. Heder and Madeley discuss the deep human story. Heden on getting to have Judy Heumman work closely before she passed away to bring her story to the screen while Madeley expressed if having played Barbara Lisicki helped her prepare for this role and more!
After opening the 51st Toronto International Film Festival and closing the 40th AFI Fest, Being Heumann is now playing in select theaters and streams on Apple TV on November 13. 2026
Source: LRMExclusive, Apple TV
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