In the relatively short period Apple TV has been in the film and television business, the streamer has garnered a reputation for telling good stories with the best talent and production quality available. It is no surprise that some of its projects have been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, with some of them winning. In 2022, Siân Heder‘s Apple TV drama film CODAmade history as the first movie from a streaming service to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.
It’s easy to see why CODA won — its story was fresh, and the cast was like nothing film had ever seen before. It was the first movie to win an Oscar while featuring a predominantly deaf cast. It added something different to the coming-of-age genre through its main character, Ruby (Emilia Jones). As a child of a deaf family, Ruby had been the connection between her family and the hearing world. But when an opportunity comes up, she is forced to choose between remaining in the comfort orbit of her family or striking out on her own. Heder is back with another equally impactful film, teaming up with Apple TV to bring the story to the screen.
The film is titled Being Heumann, and it is based on a true story. It’s 1977, and Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) is tired of the treatment she is receiving. As a young woman living with a disability, she is almost invisible, most of all to the bureaucratic machine. Her phone calls go unanswered, so she decides to make a different kind of call. Apple TV is giving the film a chance at the Academy Awards by giving it a 7-day theatrical run starting November 6 before it is available for streaming on November 13.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What Is ‘Being Heumann’ About?
With a small band of outsiders, Heumann decides enough is enough and takes over a federal building. What starts as a small act of rebellion to get the attention of a stubborn bureaucrat (played by Mark Ruffalo) ends up becoming one of the longest occupations of a federal building in American history. However, like any fresh movement that lacks institutional backing and years of established procedures, Heumann’s movement struggles to take steps forward when it has never been shown that such steps are possible. But they didn’t get this far to stop now, and what they’re doing could change the lives of millions. Heder co-wrote Being Heumann with Rebekah Taussig. Other cast members include Dylan O’Brien, Madeline Delp, Will Brill, Michael Patrick Thornton, Daniel Durant, and more.
Being Heumann opens in select theaters on November 6 before streaming on Apple TV on November 13. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
