Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, Kristen Joiner learned early that helping others wasn’t simply something you talked about. Her father, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, once brought a homeless family with three children into their home, where they stayed alongside his own family.
“My parents were very progressive,” Joiner recalls. “They were always teaching us lessons about what it means to be of service, what it means to have privilege, how do you treat people who have less?”
Those early experiences helped shape a career devoted to human rights and social change, eventually leading Joiner to an unexpected collaboration with disability rights pioneer Judy Heumann, whose remarkable life inspired the new Apple Original Film Being Heumann.
Directed by Academy Award winner Siân Heder (CODA), the film stars British actress Ruth Madeley as Heumann and dramatizes the historic 1977 Section 504 protest in San Francisco, when disability rights activists occupied a federal building for 28 days, demanding enforcement of protections against discrimination. Watch the trailer below:
Despite spending much of her career working in social justice, Joiner admits she had never heard of Heumann when her literary agent approached her about co-writing the activist’s memoir.
“Even with my background, I hadn’t seen disability as a civil rights issue,” Joiner acknowledges.
Initially uncertain about the project, she reconsidered after discovering the significance of Heumann’s accomplishments.
“This woman literally changed the landscape of the country,” Joiner recalls thinking.
Their collaboration resulted in Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, published in 2020. But it also revealed a history of exclusion that Joiner found deeply unsettling.
“It was just this slow accumulation of story after story of her being excluded,” she explains. “Who among us hasn’t felt rejected? Who likes to feel excluded or left out? This is not about disability. This is about a human feeling.”
Heumann contracted polio at 18 months old and used a wheelchair throughout her life. Although neighborhood children embraced her, the discrimination began when she was denied entry into kindergarten. Years later, after completing the requirements to become a teacher, she was refused a medical certificate because she couldn’t walk.
Rather than accept another rejection, Heumann challenged the decision and won.
“When I feel rejected, I can kind of get a little smaller, quieter,” Joiner admits. “But she was sort of the opposite. She was like, ‘No, this is wrong. And I’m gonna change it.’”
That determination would eventually help propel Heumann into the forefront of the disability rights movement, culminating in the historic 1977 protest that became the centerpiece of the film.
When Hollywood expressed interest in adapting the memoir, Joiner and Heumann were determined that the story wouldn’t become another conventional biopic celebrating a single hero.
“We wanted a filmmaker who had the sensitivity, who would be committed to telling the story,” Joiner explains. “Judy was all about the collective. How do we tell this story to really show that it’s not one person who changes the world? It’s always a group of people.”
They also insisted that disabled performers and filmmakers be meaningfully involved in bringing the story to the screen.
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Several directors expressed interest, but Joiner and Heumann hadn’t found the right fit when Heder reached out while editing CODA, her film about a hearing daughter growing up in a deaf family.
“We had a certain number of filmmakers who were interested, but it didn’t feel quite right for us,” Joiner recalls. “Then Siân called.”
Heder optioned the memoir before CODA went on to win three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
The resulting production features one of the largest ensembles of disabled actors assembled for a major motion picture. At its center is Madeley, who has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair.
“Ruth Madeley is incredible,” Joiner says. “She did such a good job of capturing Judy’s determination, her spirit, her fierceness, but also a little bit of the softness underneath, the caring.”
For Joiner, watching the story unfold on screen carried a profound emotional weight. Heumann died in March 2023, during the early stages of the film’s development.
“It was an out-of-body experience to sit and watch Ruth and the rest of the cast bring this story to life and see Judy on screen and not have Judy there,” she recalls. “I was crying through the whole thing.”
In her final years, Heumann had become increasingly concerned about how disabled people were portrayed in television and film. Joiner believes the production’s commitment to authentic representation would have been especially meaningful to her.
“She really came to that near the end of her life, where she was studying representation of people with disabilities in film and media and really pushing that we need to pay more attention to that.”
The film also arrives at a moment of renewed concern over federal disability protections. Nearly 50 years after Heumann fought to secure enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, regulations intended to protect people with disabilities, including their ability to receive assistance in their own homes and communities, are facing legal and political challenges.
“This movie is coming out at the exact time that the administration is gutting the exact regulations and protections that Judy fought for,” Joiner warns.
The potential consequences are particularly alarming for disabled Americans who depend on community-based services to live independently rather than in institutions.
For Joiner, the parallels between the 1977 protest and the challenges facing disabled Americans today underscore the importance of the film’s message. She points to the Black Panthers, labor unions, and others who supported the San Francisco protesters even though disability rights wasn’t necessarily their own cause.
“It wasn’t their fight, but they brought dinner. Or they paid for the trip to Washington, D.C. They rented a U-Haul to transport people around.”
It’s a reminder that meaningful change doesn’t always require extraordinary acts of courage. Sometimes it begins with ordinary people choosing to help one another.
“We can show up, we can bring dinner, we can drive people around. We can do whatever’s needed to support people.”
Being Heumann is the story of a life well lived, dedicated to breaking barriers, challenging injustice, and creating a more inclusive world for everyone. And according to Kristen Joiner, that’s exactly what Judy believed life was all about.
Now in select theaters November 6, 2026, and streaming on Apple TV+ November 13.
Amy Pais-Richer is a published author, screenwriter, and former advertising creative director.
