Life, Animated

Life, Animated (2016) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Roger Ross Williams. At three, a talkative boy named Owen Suskind went silent and slipped into autism. The thread back to him turned up where no one expected it — in Disney cartoons, whose lines he had memorized word for word.

The film grows out of a book by his father, journalist Ron Suskind. One day Ron slipped a puppet of Iago, the loudmouth parrot from Aladdin, onto his hand and asked his son what it felt like to be him. Owen answered — using a line from the movie. From there, Disney animation became his language for reading other people's feelings, friendship, fear and growing up.

It never milks the diagnosis for tears or frames it as a triumph; it just watches a young man move out, fall in love and figure out who he is. Williams took the directing prize at Sundance for it, and the film landed on the Oscar shortlist. A warm, honest watch for people who love documentaries about real lives. Stream Life, Animated online on iFILM.