Keep the Change
Host sponsor – Main Street Landing
Directed by Rachel Israel
USA ⎮ 2017 ⎮ Fiction ⎮ 94 mins ⎮ Open Captions
Film Source: Kino Lorber
Awards: Best U.S. Narrative Feature & Best New Narrative Director – Tribeca Film Festival, FIPRESCI Prize Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
In this original and refreshing romantic comedy, David, an upper-class charmer, leads a very comfortable life, until he is mandated to attend a support group for adults with disabilities. There, he is forced to come to terms with his own high-functioning autism, despite his resentment towards being singled out as different, or anything other than what he interprets as ‘normal.’
Director/writer Israel wrote fictional situations for her leads, Polansky and Elisofon (both people with high functioning autism), whom she named David and Sarah. But she also talked to them about their own lives and built many of those moments into the script, then allowed them to improvise during rehearsal and shooting.
“I like ‘Rain Man;’ I always have been very moved by it,” Israel said in an interview with the LA Times, “but it’s taken from the brother’s perspective. I wanted to make a human portrait that was from the [neuro-atypical] person’s perspective, fully flawed and unsanitized.”
This event is part of Global Roots Film Festival: Disability