A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism (2009)

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A mother's determination to help her autistic son takes her on a journey of discovery in this documentary from Icelandic filmmaker Fridrik Thór Fridriksson. Margrét Dagmar Ericsdóttir is a film producer who is also the mother of a young son, Keli. Keli has been diagnosed with a severe form of autism, and doctors in her native Iceland have been unable to find a suitable treatment for the boy, while a few have stated that Keli is, for all practical purposes, a lost cause. Ericsdóttir, however, refuses to believe that there is no way for her son to comprehend and communicate with the outside world, and she and Keli travel to the United States, where innovative new forms of therapy have been showing great promise. In America, Ericsdóttir meets with leading autism researchers around the country, speaks with Temple Grandin, an autistic who has become a professor of animal science, and is introduced to Soma Mukhopadhyay, the creator of a new technique for educating autistic children, the Rapid Prompting Method, which has proved to be remarkably effective. As Fridriksson and his camera crew follow Ericsdóttir on her search, their message becomes clear -- while there is still much we don't understand about autism, it is no longer as grim a diagnosis as it once was, and that there is hope even for those most severely effected by this condition. Narrated by Kate Winslet and featuring music by Sigur Rós and Björk, A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism was an official selection at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi