Life, Animated

Synopsis

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

Release date

01 Jul 2016

Directed by

Roger Ross Williams

Runtime

1h 31m

Cast

Owen Suskind

Himself

Ron Suskind

Himself

Jonathan Freeman

Himself

Gilbert Gottfried

Himself