The indie film “Daruma” — which illustrates the importance of authentic casting with disabled actors — will hold its world premiere June 28, just a few days before the start of Disability Pride Month.
The film is part of the Dances With Films Festival, which runs June 22-July 2 at the TCL Chinese theaters in Hollywood.
The festival, in its 26th year, also will screen three documentaries about disabilities: “Abled,” directed by Einar Thorsteinsson about Paralympian Blake Leeper; “Baldy for the Blind” (producer-director Drea Castro), centering on a group of blind hikers attempting to climb Mt. Baldy; and “You Have No Idea” (director Alexander Jeffery), concerning a woman trying to get treatment for her autistic son.
There is also the short “Leak,” from writer-director Jordan Martin, a dystopian drama about a man and his deaf mother.
“Daruma,” directed by Alexander Yellen and written by Kelli McNeil-Yellen, is a character study of two friends driving across the country with one man’s young daughter. It stars Tobias Forrest and John W. Lawson, respectively a wheelchair-user and a double amputee, but their disabilities are incidental to the plot.
Most mainstream films about disabled people feature name actors in the lead roles but director-cinematographer Yellen tells PvNew, “We chose a different path by building our film around two authentically cast leads. This meant having to produce the film completely independently but ultimately I believe we have a better product for it.” The festival screening sold out quickly and he hopes the film “will validate our model for other filmmakers hoping to tell similar stories.”
Co-writer-producer McNeil-Yellen adds that there is a huge untapped market for similar works. “There’s an audience demanding to see content like this and the right partners, thesmartpartners, are going to see the value a film like ‘Daruma’ adds to their bottom line.”
The six screening rooms at TCL Chinese are wheelchair-accessible and festival founders Leslee Scallon and Michael Trent say a number of the films will be shown with descriptive audio headsets, subtitles and ASL interpreters.
The festival’s features-programming chair Ariana Farina said there has been an uptick in the number of disability-themed films in recent years. “These films have done incredibly well at the festival and beyond, oftentimes with sell-out screenings. I am hoping this is an indication of a recent shift in the industry funding and supporting more projects by disabled filmmakers.”
Apple TV+ film “CODA” broke barriers when it won the Oscar for best pic, but so far, there hasn’t yet been a flood of similar films. This year’s Hollywood fare includes “Champions,” directed by Bobby Farrelly, which Focus Features opened in March, with Woody Harrelson as a coach of a team with intellectual disabilities.
The Sony release “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” includes work by actor-activist Nic Novicki (voicing Lego Spider-Man) and by Danielle Perez, voicing Sun Spider, who uses a mobility device.The film’s co-writers and producers, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, have been longtime advocates of hiring the disabled, as have the Farrelly brothers.
Also in a limited theatrical release and streaming is “Unidentified Objects,” starring Matthew Jeffers.
Disability Pride Month commemorates the July 1990 occasion when President George H.W. Bush signed theAmericans with Disabilities Actinto law.
