Being Heumann review – stirring biopic of a pioneering disability rights campaigner

Heartfelt real-life drama follows the late activist whose groundbreaking struggle helped build a rainbow alliance with gay action groups and the Black Panthers

The remarkable story of the late US disability rights campaigner and wheelchair user Judy Heumann – pronounced “human” – is the subject of this heartfelt if Hollywoodised story from director and co-writer Sian Heder, based on Heumann’s own 2020 memoir of the same title. In the lead is British actor Ruth Madeley, who has spina bifida and is herself a disability rights activist; she gives a forthright, smart, sympathetic performance.

Heumann’s finest hour was to get the federal government to sign into law Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, whose accessibility provisions had been resisted by Nixon, Ford and then Carter.