The Toronto International Film Festival has announced its opening night film. The 2026 edition of TIFF will kick off with the world premiere of Being Heumann, the latest feature from Academy Award-winning writer and director Siân Heder.
Based on disability rights activist Judy Heumann's acclaimed 2020 memoir, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist (co-authored by Kristen Joiner), the biopic chronicles one of the most important civil rights protests in American history.
Ruth Madeley stars as Heumann, and the film follows the trailblazing activist as she leads more than 100 disabled protesters in the 1977 occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building. The historic 28-day sit-in became the longest nonviolent occupation of a U.S. federal building at the time and ultimately pressured the government to enforce Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, requiring federally funded spaces and programs to become accessible for people with disabilities.
The film also stars Mark Ruffalo, Dylan O'Brien, Jon Beavers, Rob Delaney and Ray Fisher.
Heder becomes just the fourth woman to direct a TIFF opening-night film, following Sally El Hosaini's The Swimmers (2022), Deepa Mehta's Water (2005) and Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987).
The filmmaker's latest project follows the remarkable success of CODA, which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival before going on to win three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur and Best Adapted Screenplay for Heder. Despite the film's historic Oscar sweep, Heder was not nominated for Best Director. (To date, only nine women have received a total of 10 Best Director nominations in Academy Awards history, with three ultimately winning the prize.)
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival runs from Thursday September 10 to 20, 2026, with the full festival lineup set to be unveiled on Tuesday August 11. Last year's festival featured more than 200 titles, including the North American or world premieres of many of the year's most anticipated films, such as Chloé Zhao's Hamnet, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, Curry Barker's Obsession and Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
