Jerry Rothwell’s immersive documentary uses Naoki Higashida’s eponymous bestseller as the starting point for this lucid examination of Autism.
Higashida was just 13 when he wrote ‘The Reason I Jump’. It represented everything that he, as someone with autistic spectrum disorder, found himself unable to communicate verbally. For many people around the world it offered and porthole into the mind of a loved one who on occasion seemed beyond their reach.
Rothwell’s film looks at the lives of others with ASD around the world, examining aspects of their condition as a way for us to understand. He’s accompanied by novelist David Mitchell who, with Keiko Yoshida, translated Higashida’s book. Together, with composer Nainita Desai and sound designer Nick Ryan, create a sensuous world that their subjects live in. The five people the film focuses on come from India, the UK, Sierra Leone and a pair from the US. The specific challenges they face differ, but the film offers us a window into each of their worlds. Intelligent and moving, The Reason I Jump is also a dazzling cinematic achievement.
