Second trailer for A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism.
Narrated by Oscar winner Kate Winslet and directed by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism follows one woman's quest to understand autism, a neural developmental disorder. While she holds no unrealistic expectations for her son Keli, Margret worries that he may never be self-sufficient or express himself normally. Traveling from Iceland to the United States and Europe, she learns how the brains of autistic children differ from "normal" children and discovers new techniques that could offer a promising future for children with autism, including her son.
Along the way, Margret connects with families of autistic children, who share stories of their efforts to help their kids interact with the world around them. Many of their accounts echo her own struggles, including the endless doctor visits and experiments with different treatments, the complication of doing everyday tasks, and the inability to communicate with their children, perhaps the most painful and frustrating aspect of autism for them. However, many families detail innovative new therapies that might break down the wall of autism, comforting Margret with a glimmer of hope that her son may be able to communicate on a level she didn't previously expect.
After the family returns home, Margret says, "Before, we used to talk about Keli in front of him, but now we talk to him." With new hope for the future, she adds, "I can start to get to know my own child."
Among the experts and advocates Margret encounters in A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism are: Dr. David G. Amaral, research director, MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute; Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, director, Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge; Dr. Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer, Autism Speaks; Dr. Temple Grandin, best-selling author, animal scientist and autism advocate, who was recently the subject of an HBO Films biographical drama; Joseph E. Morrow, co-founder and president of ABC, Inc., a school that provides applied behavioral techniques for children with special needs; Soma Mukhopadhyay, who developed the Rapid Prompting Method to teach her autistic son Tito, now a published author; and Portia Iverson and Jonathan Shestack, parents of an autistic child and founders of Cure Autism Now.