The Reason I Jump

This starts a little slow, but once we meet the British family, it quickly becomes maybe the great autistic POV film ever made, one that will forever change how I think about the autism community. The spelling boards were mind-blowing...though I suppose my inspired astonishment at it serves as proof of my (and, I imagine, many other's) ignorance about autism. As the film says: "Neurotypicals are rubbish at understanding anything that isn't neurotypical."

Through understanding and listening to people, allowing them to communicate in their own way, we can all move towards better awareness, compassion and work towards ending misunderstanding and mistreatment. Many need to learn to look beyond external difference and see that there is a whole human being, with thoughts, emotions and as much of a right to fulfilling life as any other. I do wish though, that David Mitchell had stayed behind the scenes. Naoki Higashida's message is strong, it doesn't need to be 'neurotypical-splained'. There is enough domination of discussion of autism by parents of autistic children, sidelining actually autistic people who are able to share our own experiences.

Shares how those on the non verbal autism spectrum process their environmental data which is different for each of the 6 people this doc focuses on. Based on The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida.

You can see the love and craft in every frame of this movie. There were certain characters I would like to have seen more of, but I understand the constraints. The way it renders autism is very humanistic and he film does a really great job of bringing the viewer into this world. I saw it at the Hot Docs online and really wish I could have seen it on the big screen It reminded me of another film I saw at Sundance a few years ago called Notes on Blindness which does a phenomenal job of 'seeing' the day to day of what a blind person's life could be like in an extraordinary way.

Tears in my eyes.

This is such a beautiful film about autism. A must-see to understand the world of autistic people. Whatever is said about these people, they have feelings, intelligence and everything 'normal' people have in their personalities. Only their experience of expressing and seeing the world is different, would even say, to be more sensitive than us 'normals'. Their outbursts of anger and aggressiveness is only their expression of frustration and sadness for not being able to share anything with us 'normals'. How would you be yourself!!!

Dare I even say, these people are more authentic than many others on this globe.