Radha Mehta’s brilliant narrative short film, DOSH, follows a hard-of-hearing mother as a night with her husband’s traditional family goes amiss; while spotlighting the fight against familial denialism and damp cold alienation that many Disabled people face — while also maintaining a dark and thrilling plot.
The title, DOSH, is Hindi for “fault.” In the film, the protagonist confronts her mother-in-law about her husband’s mental health hoping for a mother’s support, but she’s quickly shut down. Things go awry when her husband retaliates by ripping the assistive hearing devices from the protagonist’s ears during a pre-wedding ritual. Overall, this an intersectional masterpiece. It weaves the culture of Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities with South-Asian taboos like disability being shameful or a punishment from God, while also leveraging the dramatic tension of a husband and wife in freefall. A pivotal scene at the end of the film depicts the deeply empathetic protagonist kneeling down in the tub with her distraught husband, the one who tossed her assistive hearing devices. [continue reading…]
Just 2.1% of characters in the top 100 films in 2022 experience a mental health condition including addiction (28 characters), anxiety/PTSD (24), mood disorder (21), suicide (14), significant disturbance in thinking (8), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (2). Some characters presented with more than one mental health condition. This representation shows little growth since 2019 (1.5%) and 2016 (1.7%).
Fall down seven times, get up eight. On June 29th, 2023, the indie feature Daruma had its world premiere through Dances with Films Film Festival to a sold out crowd at the illustrious TCL Chinese Theatre.
A collective groan could be heard across the world throughout the pandemic. COVID disrupted everyone’s lives and intensified inequalities. Among those hit hardest by the disease are people with disabilities, who are 
Fall into young Canadian filmmaker Arianna Goarley’s gutsy and gleeful creative cavern as she invokes the wonders of ADHD paired with the world’s most renowned Alice. Her film, The Tea Party, is an Alice in Wonderland-inspired narrative short that explores ADHD and how it manifests in a young person’s life.
In a world where mental health is often stigmatized and misunderstood, the writer and director of “Heightened,” Sara Friedman, takes viewers on a transformative journey. The film, which is part of the 2023 Dances with Films festival, dives into what it is like to live with anxiety and borderline obsessive-compulsive disorder. As we are introduced to Nora, also portrayed by Sara Friedman, we witness the challenges she faces and the pivotal moment that catapults her onto a path of self-discovery.
Abled is an inspirational film but it is not inspiration porn. This documentary, which is part of the 2023 Dances with Films festival, follows Paralympian Blake Leeper training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games while he is in a legal battle with the World Athletics on whether his prosthetic legs give him an advantage. He is a 400-meter runner who competed in both disabled and nondisabled spaces throughout college and into his professional career, until he ran 400-meters in under 45 seconds. Once he crossed the 45 seconds line, he was on par with any world class nondisabled runner, and World Athletics claimed that he was technologically doping. However, the organization did not need to prove that claim; instead, they shifted the burden of proof to Leeper; he had to prove that the prosthetics did not give him an advantage. He had to disprove ableist assumptions rather than the institution having to back up its ableist thinking. This documentary shows Leeper trying to prove that his advantage comes from hard work and dedication, not his equipment.
