Film Screening 2:
An Ode to Diversity

What if the unusual is the most joyful thing on earth? Autistic Joy is a look inside the worlds we build with our hands, our eyes, and our bodies. World neurotypicals walk right past. Where flickers, textures, and deep fixations become gateways to tremendous joy.

Filmmaker: Aaron Shrimpton, Maddi Crease

A mother stumbles upon her child's autism diagnosis. Among the challenges she faces, the scrutiny of others, the barriers, the chaos—little does she know how magical her child's inner world truly is.

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Filmmaker: Cameron Carr

Trigger Warning: involuntary behavioral intervention, involuntary confinement, child in distress

Being autistic means that there is a lot going on inside us that is unseen. Misunderstanding of what our true emotions are. How our brain works. The constellation of our brain is not in line with the norm but its just differences.

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Filmmaker: Helen Edgar, Thriving Autistic

She finally has a name for the chaos. But her ADHD brain won't let her process it. So she sifts through her memories instead—every forgotten task, every lost moment, every failure that finally makes sense. This is the story of a girl learning that she was never broken. She was just undiagnosed.

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Filmmakers: Anna Messerschmidt​

A whimsical video poem where self-reflection and special interest merge into one. The migration of the monarch butterfly becomes a journey—both for the butterflies and for the protagonist, who finds herself reflected in their path.

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Filmmaker: Anne Ciecko

Trigger Warning: Flashing lights, Butterflies

A video poem. A flow of observation monologue—unfiltered, unstoppable, acute. After a life of observing the neurotypical world: its rhythms, its rules, its silences that mean everything. This is a letter to the world that keeps asking them to shrink—and a refusal to shrink any longer.

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Filmmaker: Anne Ciecko

Trigger Warning: Flashing lights, Ants

A beautiful yet dark animation. Memories of a time when fear was simple—when a collection of cards could make the world feel safe. But the cards don't work anymore. He shuffles through them, desperate to find an answer, a pattern, a sign that everything will be okay. But some things aren't in the cards. This is a story about the quiet terror of growing up and OCD—and the things we collect to keep ourselves from falling apart.

Filmmaker: Radheya Jang