Good Films: Disability movies

This is the first installment of “Good Films You May Have Missed,” a series that will call attention to movies new and old that Filmworks didn’t show for one reason or another. Titles are available (or soon will be) from Netflix and other streaming services.

By Jim Piper

RUST AND BONE
France/Belgium • 2012 • Dir: Jacques Audiard
A woman who trains killer whales for a living has a horrible accident that puts her out of a job. Somehow, Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, a hot-tempered kick boxer, fall in love, though it’s a stormy affair.

THE SESSIONS
USA • 2012 • Dir: Ben Lewin
A flat-on-his-back disabled man hires a woman who provides him an initiation to sex. Stars John Hawkes and Helen Hunt.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND
USA • 2001 • Dir: Ron Howard
Russell Crowe plays an American Nobel-prize winning mathematician who slips into schizophrenia.

See this list for more films in which lead characters struggle with disabilities.

Jim Piper is a Filmworks board member, a filmmaker, and a retired film studies professor.