There are millions of people in the world who stutter when they speak. I’ll never forget that moment when President Joe Biden, who himself overcame a stuttering problem, helped a young boy who suffers from the same affliction. My own father dealt with it well into adulthood. The stigma that it causes can have a severe impact on one’s self-confidence, but the upcoming doc My Beautiful Stutter will focus on one group dedicated to stopping that from an early age.
Directed by Ryan Gielen (The Graduates), My Beautiful Stutter “follows five kids who stutter, ages 9 to 18, from all over the United States and all walks of life, who, after experiencing a lifetime of bullying and stigmatization, meet other children who stutter at an interactive arts-based program, The Stuttering Association for the Young, based in New York City. Their journey to SAY find some close to suicide, others withdrawn and fearful, exhausted and defeated from failed fluency training, societal pressures to not stutter or the decision to remain silent. Over the course of a year we witness first hand the incredible transformation that happens when these young people of wildly different backgrounds experience for the first time the revolutionary idea at the heart of SAY: that it’s okay to stutter.”
The film has some serious supporters, too, with Mariska Hargitay and Paul Rudd as exec-producers. This is the kind of heartwarming, uplifting message I think we all can get behind, and with Biden in office right now more focus on getting help to those who stutter is a good thing.
My Beautiful Stutter hits Discovery+ on March 11th.
