{"id":666471,"date":"2026-10-27T04:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T04:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666471\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T04:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T04:02:12","slug":"sian-heder-used-moment-of-power-after-oscar-win-for-being-heumann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666471\/","title":{"rendered":"Sian Heder Used ‘Moment of Power’ After Oscar Win for ‘Being Heumann’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFour years after CODA<\/a> took home a best picture Oscar,<\/a> Sian Heder<\/a> is back with her follow-up project Being Heumann<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tHeder \u2014 who also landed an Academy Award for adapted screenplay \u2014 wrote and directed the film, which tells the story<\/a> of disability rights activist Judy Heumann. In 1977, Heumann (played by Ruth Madeley) led a 28-day occupation of San Francisco\u2019s Federal Building in a fight for accessibility laws and equal rights. The onscreen retelling, as a result, features a large cast of disabled actors, some of whom are acting for the first time.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it came to deciding what to do next after CODA, Heder told The Hollywood Reporter at the film\u2019s AFI Fest<\/a> premiere on Sunday that \u201cI did have a lot of options. I will say that I also had a moment of power in the industry where I was like, \u2018Oh, people want to make what I want to make?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis movie was impossible on paper; this was a movie that probably a lot of people would have said no to if I wasn\u2019t using the capital I had just earned to go, \u2018Actually I want to make this one next, and I want to have 12 disabled leads, and I want to have a lot of unknown actors, and it\u2019s a period piece, and we need to build an accessibility team,’\u201d the filmmaker continued. \u201cI think a lot of it for me was like arriving at a moment where I finally could get the yes, and what was I going to use the moment for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tD\u2019Arcee Charington Neal, David Permut, Adam Caldwell, Francesco Le Metre, Ann Molin, Rein Barcel, Bernard Telsey, Geraud Brisson, Nic Novicki, Kevin J. Walsh, John W. Beach, Daniel Durant, Rio Finnegan, Kevin Cleary, Charlie Rush-Reese, Andrew Pilkington, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew August Jeffers, Sian Heder, Ruth Madeley, Roberta Colindrez, Antwan Tolliver, Siena Rafter, Ray Fisher, Diana Pokorny, Michael Patrick Thornton, Alex Astrachan, Madeline Delp, Kristen Joiner, Rebekah Taussig and James Lebrecht at the AFI Fest Being Heumann premiere.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKevin Winter\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie\u2019s success, though, largely rested on finding the right actress to play Heumann, who was known as \u201cMother of the Disability Rights Movement\u201d and died in 2023. Heder had worked with Heumann for several years, which she said made casting \u201ceven more difficult\u201d as she knew the real person she was trying to capture on screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tMadeley eventually landed the role, noting that when she heard the news that Heder was telling Heumann\u2019s story, \u201cAs a disabled person I was like, \u2018Thank God it\u2019s her,\u2019 because I knew it was going to be done right. And then as a disabled actor I was like, \u2018Get me in the damn room!\u2019 I just wanted a shot.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tNow that the film is being released, after debuting at TIFF<\/a> earlier this fall, Madeley said she\u2019s excited \u201cto just know the impact of what this movie will do, not just to the disabled community but to the industry. I feel like we\u2019re in a real moment now and people can\u2019t look away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEchoed Heder, who is once again getting Oscar buzz, \u201cIt\u2019s so exciting with this cast to go out into the world because when you\u2019re working with actors who are experiencing it for the first time, there\u2019s so much joy around it \u2014 that joy is infectious and it makes me love what we do again and love this process. Even being on a red carpet<\/a>, watching all these different bodies on a red carpet, this feels like rebellion to show up with this crew in Hollywood. That\u2019s the work Judy was doing, and it feels like we\u2019re continuing her fight with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing Heumann hits select theaters Nov. 6 and starts streaming on Apple TV on Nov. 13. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years after CODA took home a best picture Oscar, Sian Heder is back with her follow-up project…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[12567,280831,263779,321,123870,93,5499,61,60,4915,216643],"class_list":["post-666471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-afi-fest","tag-afi-fest-2026","tag-being-heumann","tag-celebrities","tag-coda","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-red-carpet","tag-sian-heder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}