An important story in the fight for equal rights is revealed in Director Siân Heder’s biographical drama, Being Heumann.

Heder’s film tells the true story of Judy Heumann, a young disabled woman who challenged discrimination in education and employment. In 1977, after U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 — the first U.S. federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities — Heumann and a scrappy coalition of outsiders seized the federal building in San Francisco, sparking what became the longest occupation of a federal building in American history as hundreds spontaneously took over government offices and refused to leave until the bureaucrats took action.

Heder had previously discussed the film during the DGA Disability Committee’s preview screening event in Los Angeles on September 19. She did so again following the November 1 DGA membership screening in New York, where in a conversation with Director Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Bride!) she spoke about working with her disabled cast.

“Disability and moviemaking might be at absolute cross-purposes with each other because to make a movie, ‘time is money and we’re losing the light,’ and you have to keep going. There’s an ethos in filmmaking where it’s like the military. It’s like war. Like everyone’s gonna kill themselves for the movie. And you go until you fall over. You push your body to the limit, and you don’t sleep, and you don’t eat. It definitely made me think about how we make movies. Because I think it does ask so much of people, and it means that you can’t include people who need to sit down or can’t work a 12-hour day without breaks or taking care of their bodies in some way. That was the thing that struck me, was that there’s never been an effort to include other kinds of bodies, and then you’re missing out on incredible creatives and artists.”

Heder’s other directorial credits include the feature films Tallulah and the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Coda; and episodes of The Path, GLOW, Orange Is the New Black and Little America. She has been a DGA member since 2016.