How do you tell the story of someone who's in your family but doesn't have a voice to say whether or not they want that story told? If you're filmmaker, Kirsten Johnson, who has a younger sister with Down Syndrome, Autism and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you don't film her at all. Instead, you hand-draw over a thousand drawings, recreate distressing incidents from the past and bring imaginative scenarios to life that illuminate what's it's like to have someone in your life whose personal reality you can only begin to fathom.
What emerges is a loving and wistful portrait. Seasoned with empathy and humour, The 21st Chromosome creatively addresses entrenched societal prejudice against people with differences.
