Is There Anybody Out There?

While navigating daily discrimination, a filmmaker who inhabits and loves her unusual body searches the world for another person like her, and explores what it takes to love oneself fiercely despite the pervasiveness of ableism.

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SYNOPSIS

Born with no hip joints and short femurs, a condition so rare that there is little reliable information about it, Ella Glendining decides to go in search of people who can share their experience and feelings about having a body like hers. In doing so, she challenges lazy ableist assumptions, experiences a number of unexpected surprises and encounters people who look like her. With great warmth and an infectious joy for her body and life as it is, Glendining challenges us to question the way we see others, like and unlike ourselves. IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? is a revelatory film that gently tugs at the viewer’s biases and looks to a day when inclusivity is no longer an ‘issue.'

PRESS

"Like 2020 Sundance breakout CRIP CAMP, Glendining’s film is a well argued and moving reminder that we still live in a world where too many see disability as something that needs to be ‘fixed’ rather than more willingly accommodated."

Screen Daily

"An exploration of what it takes to love yourself fiercely as a disabled person in an ableist world."

Naman Ramachandran Variety

"**** Ella Glendining’s intelligent documentary challenges the discriminatory attitudes she faces as a young woman with a rare physical disability."

Peter Bradshaw The Guardian

“Quite simply one of the best first-person documentaries about disability available.”

Nadine Whitney The Curb

"an unexpectedly badass victory cry"

Reel News Daily

"a profoundly inspiring celebration of identity and a true act of love"

That Shelf

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Silver Horn Social Issues Award, Krakow FF 2023
FIPRESCI Award, Krakow FF 2023
Bring The Change Award - Arca di Noè, Biografilm Festival 2023
Nominee, Best Debut Director - Feature Documentary, British Independent Film Awards

Sundance Film Festival
South by Southwest Film Festival
Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival
Hot Docs Film Festival
Sydney Film Festival
Doc NYC
Sheffield Documentary Film Festival

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Ella Bee Glendining

Ella Glendining is a writer-director dedicated to telling authentic disabled stories, drawing on her own experience with a congenital, rare leg disability. She has written and directed short films with backing from Film4, the BFI, Arts Council England, Screen South, and the National Paralympic Heritage Trust. Glendining was named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow 2020. She is currently writing a feature fiction film called CURIOSITIES OF FOOLS for the BFI.

Director: Ella Glendining
Producer: Janine Marmot
Executive Producers: Lisa Marie Russo, Nikki Parrott, Mark Thomas, Natasha Dack Ojumu
Production Company: Hot Property Films LTD
Co-Production Company: Tigerlilly Two
Cinematography: Annemarie Lean-Vercoe
Editor: Rachel Roberts
Music: Erland Cooper

Subject Areas

Disabilities

The R-Word

A 28 minute educational version is also available, email [email protected] for details. THE R-WORD is an intimate look at the history of the word ‘retard(ed),’ cultural representation, and the challenges and triumphs of people living with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

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Defiant Lives

DEFIANT LIVES is a triumphant film that traces the origins of the world-wide disability rights movement.

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On Beauty

From Emmy®-nominated IN THE FAMILY filmmaker Joanna Rudnick and Chicago’s Kartemquin Films comes a story about challenging norms and redefining beauty. ON BEAUTY follows fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the fashion world when he grew frustrated with having to work within the restrictive parameters of the industry’s standard of beauty. After a chance encounter with a young woman who had the genetic condition albinism, Rick re-focused his lens on those too often relegated to the shadows to change the way we see and experience beauty. At the center of ON BEAUTY are two of Rick's photo subjects: Sarah and Jayne. In eighth grade Sarah left public school because she was bullied so harshly for the birthmark on her face and brain. Jayne lives with albinism in Eastern Africa where society is blind to her unique health and safety needs and where witch doctors hunt people with her condition to sell their body parts. We follow Rick as he uses his lens to challenge convention and media’s narrow scope of with the help of two extraordinary women.

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OUR CATALOG