LISTEN Movie

A short film in which nonspeaking autistic people talk about how nonspeakers are represented in books, theatre, and film. They provide guidance for changing the narrative. Learn more and access transcripts, translations, and a toolkit here: Here’s how it began: On December 24, 2020, the musician Sia publicly offered to fund CommunicationFIRST to make an introductory short to her new movie MUSIC. The short was intended to help humanize and spread awareness about real nonspeaking autistic people, who were left out of MUSIC, despite being the subject of the movie. In response to this offer, a team of nonspeaking and autistic people brought together by CommunicationFIRST in January 2021 previewed MUSIC in a special closed screening arranged by Sia’s management, and provided feedback and recommendations to Sia on how to improve it. However, they received no further response from Sia’s team. In early February 2021, CommunicationFIRST decided to move forward to produce