The Reason I Jump

This screening took place on Saturday, February 13, 2021 at 3:00 pmYukon Arts Centre

In-cinema tickets on sale January 7

In 2007, Naoki Higashida, a non-speaking autistic 13-year-old in Japan, released the bestselling memoir “The Reason I Jump.” Taking this ground-breaking first-person account of a child’s experience of autism as his guide, award-winning filmmaker Jerry Rothwell (How to Change the World) dramatizes Higashida’s prose via an alter ego who shares what is in his mind and insights into his behaviour.

These imaginative sequences are woven with chronicles of five other young non-verbal people with autism and their families, from India, Sierra Leone, the UK and USA. Amrit expresses her complex interior life through her drawings, while Ben is able to declare the infringement of his civil rights using an alphabet board. Taken together, these impressionistic and firsthand experiences powerfully communicate the frustrations and enormous challenges of living inside a body that cannot speak - Hot Docs

“It's as emotionally piercing as it is beautiful to behold... “ – Guy Lodge, Variety