True/False 2025: Deaf President Now! is a crucial reminder of the power of collective action

Deaf President Now! // Courtesy Apple TV+

Missouri-based film festival True/False is running currently, and this is one of the many reviews about new, innovative documentary & documentary-adjacent movies premiering in Columbia, MO. Read more here. 

I’m inherently skeptical of crowd-pleasing documentaries with big budgets. It’s not that they can’t be good. I love a heartwarming, inspiring tale as much as the next one. But, as any True/False veteran will tell you, the truth is complicated. Real life doesn’t fit a three-act structure. Give me a rousing tale about a social movement accomplishing Big Things, and I’ll immediately start asking questions.

But here’s the deal: as much as I’d like to roll my eyes at the occasional ways that Deaf President Now! manipulates its storytelling to fit a jump-up-and-cheer mold (and pre-2025, I absolutely would have), right now we desperately need stories that show us the potential of collective action.

We need examples from recent history that energize us to rally around our communities, take to the streets and demand change. And boy howdy if Davis Guggenheim and Nyle DiMarco’s documentary doesn’t do exactly that.

Deaf President Now! follows a week in 1988 when students at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world’s first university for Deaf students, held protests demanding the board of trustees hire the first Deaf president in the university’s 124-year history. The protests came following news that the board hired a hearing woman with no experience in the Deaf community, Ellen Zinser, for the position, overlooking two fully qualified Deaf candidates.

Guggenheim and DiMarco focus on four of the students who spearheaded the protests, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Greg Hlibok, Tim Rarus and Jerry Covell. Their nemesis: Jane Bassett Spilman, the snobby, patrician hearing-able head of Gallaudet’s board. For a full week, the Gallaudet students staged a sit-in protesting Zinser’s hiring, demanding the decision be overturned, and Spilman resign her position. As the protest started gaining national attention, Bourne-Firl, Hlibok, Rarus and Covell learned valuable lessons in collaboration, solidarity and demanding the world respect their identity as Deaf individuals.

The film’s visuals are pin-neat, with one of those classic “you can’t make this up” story arcs. Interviews with Bourne-Firl, Hlibok, Rarus and Covell are conducted in sign language, with actors including Leland Orser and Tim Blake Nelson voicing the translations. There’s rousing music, lots of inspiring archive footage and folks speaking with moving honesty about the sanctity of having a supportive community like Gallaudet, a contrast to their experiences growing up with hearing family or older generations of Deaf parents whose approach to discrimination was to simply put their heads down.

Deaf President Now!’s story is already so outstanding that the elements that get massaged for maximum emotional effect feel extra obvious. During a climactic news interview on broadcast TV between Hlibok, Spilman and Ted Koppel, Hlibok makes the bold choice to remove his hearing aid at the last minute and lean into his Deafness. It’s a rousing moment, but one that likely didn’t land with that much gravitas in the moment. In the same scene, Hlibok’s overall performance starts weak, but later takes a turn for the powerful. Guggenheim, DiMarco and editor Michael Harte make sure to drag out that tension as long as possible before that final victory lap swerve.

This is all exactly what you might expect from a documentary with a wide distribution deal (this one’s being released by Apple TV+), but those elements don’t distract from the power and the charm of Deaf President Now!. In a moment of deep cultural nihilism and burnout, it’s more important than ever to look to examples of groups of people standing up for themselves and refusing to stand aside or look the other way, and finding joy and community in that process. It’s even more important to see that victory and advancement is possible, and that the people responsible for that change are still with us, and happy to share how they made it happen.

Deaf President Now! ultimately leaves audiences (or at least left mine) inspired to go find a cause to stand for, and a community to stand with. As it happens, there are endless urgent opportunities to do that right now, some of which also involve standing up for people with disabilities and vulnerable populations impacted by destructive government spending cuts. The fact that the movie is a shot of political engagement adrenaline far outweighs any cynicism about its neatness.