More specifically, the film looks at the pivotal 1977 protest in which Heumann led a group in a 26-day sit-in at a federal office building in San Francisco until the government began enforcing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 \u2014 the first federal law that recognized disability as a civil rights category.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that her last name was \u2018human\u2019 has so many beautiful layers of meaning,\u201d says Heder, 49, during a recent interview in Los Angeles. \u201cI think Judy was asking for the world to see disabled people as human beings who were worthy of rights and being looked at and being included.\u201d<\/p>\n
A world premiere and the opening-night selection of this year\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival, which begins on Thursday, \u201cBeing Heumann\u201d will hit theaters Nov. 6 and begin streaming on Apple TV Nov. 13. It is also, crucially, Heder\u2019s first film since 2021\u2019s \u201cCODA,\u201d<\/a> the bittersweet drama about a young woman in a Deaf family (the title is an acronym for \u201cchild of Deaf adults\u201d) that won three Academy Awards<\/a> including adapted screenplay for Heder and best picture.<\/p>\n Actor Ruth Madeley and filmmaker Si\u00e2n Heder during production on \u201cBeing Heumann.\u201d<\/p>\n (Apple TV)<\/p>\n In Heumann, a wheelchair user after contracting polio as a child, Heder found a subject who was in the process of discovering herself as a leader: learning when to hold firm and when to cede ground and empower other people. And for someone who was grappling with the aftermath of unexpected success, that felt familiar.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I was making a movie about myself, honestly,\u201d Heder says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re moving forward on a massive project or a movement or anything, there\u2019s a necessary drive and ambition and focus that is needed. And if you look at any major change that\u2019s happened in human history, it takes a certain kind of person to push that through. I\u2019m not identifying myself with great leaders of the civil rights movement, but directing a movie is a similar thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Heder is tucked into a quiet corner of a busy coffee shop in L.A.\u2019s Eagle Rock neighborhood, where she has long lived. She is in the process of moving from one historic house to an even older one a few blocks away. Heder didn\u2019t want to disrupt the schooling of her two young children, ages 10 and 12, and has become too enmeshed in the area to want to leave it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely an element of: \u2018She manipulated everyone with that movie. She made us all cry and that\u2019s why she won,\u2019\u201d Heder says of \u201cCODA,\u201d her Oscar-winning best picture. \u201cI was an indie filmmaker that was compelled to tell that story.\u201d<\/p>\n (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Community is a word that comes up often over the course of a conversation with Heder, who has a warm manner and a quiet self-possession. Though \u201cCODA\u201d may have brought her wider attention, she was far from a novice by the time she made that film. She won a Peabody Award as a writer on the series \u201cMen of a Certain Age\u201d and was a writer, director and producer on the acclaimed \u201cOrange Is the New Black.\u201d She expanded her 2006 short film \u201cMother\u201d into her first feature \u201cTallulah,\u201d<\/a> about a young woman who takes a baby from a reckless mother and tries to pass it off as her own. It premiered at Sundance in 2016.<\/p>\n Winning the Oscar created changes in her life both big and small. Heder at first kept it on her desk at home, but had to move it because she began to feel the statuette\u2019s crossed arms quietly judging her as she worked. When she drove herself to the Spirit Awards the year after \u201cCODA\u2019s\u201d triumph and spontaneously gave a ride to an afterparty to Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Heder suddenly realized her 10-year-old Subaru wasn\u2019t going to cut it anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a nicer car now,\u201d she says, laughing at the memory. \u201cIt\u2019s baby steps.\u201d<\/p>\n The day after the Oscars, Heder recalls that she couldn\u2019t stop crying, all the pressure built up from months of campaigning events and Q&As finally letting itself out.<\/p>\n She says two things changed almost immediately after winning the Oscar. One was a sense of expectation, wanting to make the most of whatever the moment might allow.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was not a part of my plans,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t ever intend to have so many eyeballs turn to me and go, \u2019What are you doing now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The second was simply the volume of material and opportunities incoming. Heder says she met with Marvel \u201cso many times\u201d about different projects but none of them felt right. As an independent filmmaker \u201cyou\u2019re always pushing against the no,\u201d she puts it, moving projects forward against all odds. But now she felt she had to be the resistance, the one to ask whether something was worthwhile.<\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly there are a lot of voices chiming in too because your reps have an idea of what you should do next and the industry has an idea of what you should do next,\u201d Heder says. \u201cAnd it was really important for me to center myself back in a feeling of: I\u2019ve always been drawn to stories because they move me. And that hasn\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Her Oscars triumph was also the night of the notorious Will Smith-Chris Rock on-stage slap<\/a>, which overshadowed coverage. Heder is online enough that she knows that some film fans would want an asterisk next to the Oscar wins for \u201cCODA,\u201d<\/a> as if to note some sort of COVID-era exception for the first film from a streaming service to win Hollywood\u2019s top award.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely an element of: \u2018She manipulated everyone with that movie. She made us all cry and that\u2019s why she won,\u2019\u201d Heder says with a edge of defiance. \u201cI was an indie filmmaker that was compelled to tell that story. And then audiences embraced that story and that story took off in a way that was unexpected and surprising even for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Si\u00e2n Heder holds her Oscar for best adapted screenplay for \u201cCODA\u201d backstage during the Oscars in 2022.<\/p>\n (Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788956891_586_.jpeg\")
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