A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.
An old man is found dead, and his housekeeper is charged with the murder. Her defense attorney is surprised to learn the only witness to the crime is a teenage girl with autism.
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
Grandpa Oskar takes neither the truth nor himself very seriously. The rascal has just been released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for imposture. Since the ex-con needs a place to stay, he quartered himself in the old construction trailer in the farthest corner of the garden of his daughter Tilda, who is still mad at him. The senior soon meets his autistic granddaughter Fanny, whose antics and peculiarities threaten to break the family under. In contrast to the old man, the 8-year-old takes the truth very seriously. In order to gain their trust, Oskar does not introduce himself to the comic-loving girl as the criminal grandpa, who has been missing for years, but as Professor Krypton. For Fanny, who prefers to wear a brightly colored superhero costume and is teased at school for it, the omniscient mentor from the Superman planet comes along just at the right time, because she has a dream: To win the talent competition at school!
A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.
Harassed by bullies because of his mild autism, teen Ben finds refuge in an online computer game, which leads him to his virtual dream girl, Scarlite. Together, the odd couple seeks revenge against Ben's tormentors.
A recently widowed, now single father struggles to raise his sixth-grade son with autism. The pressure of his job and coping with the loss of his wife proves to push him nearly to the breaking point.
Marlo, a mother of three, including a newborn, is gifted a night nanny by her brother. Hesitant at first, she quickly forms a bond with the thoughtful, surprising, and sometimes challenging nanny named Tully.
In a remote woodland cabin, a small town doctor discovers Nell — a beautiful young hermit woman with many secrets.
Thomas is turning 16. His dad's in the army and they've just moved to a town in New South Wales; his mom is pregnant; his older brother, Charlie, who's autistic, has his own adolescent sexual issues. Thomas finds Charlie an embarrassment in public, so when Thomas is attracted to Jackie, a girl in his swim class, Charlie presents any number of obstacles when she drops by their house, when the three of them go for a walk, and during a family birthday dinner. Can Thomas find a way to enter the world of teen romance and still be his brother's keeper, or is Charlie's disability going to prove more than Thomas can handle?
A mentally challenged girl proves herself to be every bit as capable as her "perfect" sister when she moves into an apartment and begins going to college.
Renegade FBI agent Art Jeffries protects a nine-year-old autistic boy who has cracked the government's new "unbreakable" code.
A young couple is overjoyed when they find out that, after having had two girls, the wife is pregnant again, and this time it will be a son. However, the boy turns out to autistic. Unhappy with the diagnoses and treatments available, they decide to work out their own therapy program for their son.
Dr. John Carpenter takes the job of running a health center in a low-income district. He enlists three women to help out who — unbeknownst to him — are actually nuns in street clothes. The church wants to improve the neighborhood but fears that nuns in full habit would not be well received. Unaware of her unavailability, John falls for Sister Michelle, serenading her with his guitar — which, luckily for him, effectively wears away at her religious resolve.
Zu, a free spirit estranged from her family, suddenly finds herself the sole guardian of her half-sister, Music, a teenager on the autism spectrum whose whole world order has been beautifully crafted by her late grandmother. The film soon challenges whether it is Zu or Music who has a better view of the world, and that love, trust, and being able to be there for each other is everything.
When Maggie's sister Jenna saddles her with an autistic newborn named Cody she touches Maggie's heart and becomes the daughter she has always longed for. But six years later Jenna suddenly re-enters her life and, with her mysterious new husband, Eric Stark, abducts Cody. Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis takes up her cause when he realizes that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently murdered children.
Doom Island is a personal perspective on Martin's life and autism and schizophrenia from the inside, in a language we can all understand: film. Viewers join Martin when he began film making using Rick Schmidt's book in 1988 and along the way see Martin experience love, grief, and try to figure out existential meaning through the unique perspectives afforded by autism and psychosis, and even join him on a journey to Switzerland to visit a mysterious nuclear physics research laboratory, where the God Particle was discovered. "One of my favorite indie works, beautifully made, original, and as perfectly personal as it gets." Rick Schmidt author of 'Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Film, Edit and Promote a Feature-Length Film for Less Than $10,000.'
Autism by Salamtak, an awareness-evoking short cinema on how to discover and deal with autism.