Most autistic people have extreme sensory sensitivity so when a character focuses on a particular object, the camera will mirror their perception in an extreme close-up, letting us in on their viewpoint, and the editing snaps to different images as the characters focus their attention elsewhere. The stories each segment and character tell are fascinating insights into their lives but it’s the cinematography and sound design that elevates the film into something special. It is really eye-opening and endearing to see the different parents open up about their original perception of their children and how they grew to learn from and understand them.

As well as the autistic people themselves, we see things from the perspectives of their parents, acting as another way for the audience to connect to the characters. It makes for a nice structure as Amrit, a visual artist based in India, serves as an introduction to the audience on what being autistic is like from a sensory perspective and then each segment focuses on a different aspect: the challenges of anger and anxiety, friendships and the tools that can help, the stigma that still surrounds the subject. Most of the film is broken up into segments that focus on a particular person: a young girl from India, a teen from England, two friends from the States and a girl from Sierra Leone.

Director Jerry Rothwell utilises visuals and sound design with such creativity that it lets the audience directly empathise with the cast. This documentary narrates passages from the book as it lets us in on the lives of different nonverbal autistic people from around the world. The Reason I Jump is based off the book of the same name: a biography of Naoki Higashida, a thirteen-year-old nonverbal autistic person from Japan. Just like trying to understand any viewpoint from someone who is different to you, understanding autism can be difficult and requires a great deal of empathy to even begin understanding what being autistic means. “Utilises visuals and sound design with such creativity”Īs someone who was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, I only know too well some of the ways autistic people view the world and the stigmas we face from society.

The reason i jump 2020