![]() ![]() In India, Amrit pours her frustrations at being unable to verbally communicate with others into vibrant paintings so good that they earn her a solo-gallery show in the UK, Joss struggles to differentiate between the past and the present, the events of ten years ago feeling as raw and current as contemporary emotions in Virginia are besties Ben and Emma, who communicate through an alphabet board which gives them time to be more articulate and, finally, we meet Jestina in Sierra Leone, a superstitious country where ASD is often branded as demonic - many children diagnosed with it are left in the bush, such is the stigma of raising a ‘disabled’ child. ![]() Rothwell’s solution to filming Higashida’s seemingly unfilmable book is to channel the author’s thoughts and feelings through the real experiences of young adults living with autism. The author, Naoki Higashida, was 13 years old at the time he wrote the memoir, and nonverbal. Rather than attempt a literal translation, documentarian Jerry Rothwell interprets and riffs on Higashida’s writing, amplifying the ideas in a way that’s at once impressionistic yet lucid. The newest is The Reason I Jump, popular in Japan since it was published in 2007. The Reason I Jump offers an insiders guide to the autistic experiences of a non-verbal Japanese thirteen year old, Naoki Higashida. Naoki Higashida’s slender tome, written when he was just 13, is a collection of 58 questions and answers that convey what it feels like to be autistic. The Reason I Jump is an object lesson in turning a book based on a literary conceit into riveting cinema. ![]()
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