“The meaning of our friendship can’t be defined by words,” Ben expresses in the film, communicating-like Naoki-by indicating letters on a letter board. Rothwell also spent time with Ben and Emma from Fairfield, Virginia, who have known each other since preschool. There’s Joss from Broadstairs, England, son of the film’s producers Stevie Lee and Jeremy Dear, who is acutely attuned to sound and light, and Jestina from Freetown, Sierra Leone, whose constant companion is a red and gold ribbon that she strokes for security. Rothwell, who is based in Britain, traveled the world to document several young non-speaking autistic people, including Amrit in Noida, India, a gifted artist whose line drawings constitute a visual diary of her day. I just kind of went into spaces and found what we could see.” “There’s no kind of special visual effects there, and there’s not a lot of premeditation either. “As soon as you start to look at the world in that slightly different way, and you see the way that light that you normally filter out is kind of hitting here, then you just build on that, really,” Rothwell explains of his photographic take. He shot radiant scenes of roiled seas, gentle rain, a lighthouse flaring its yellow beam across the night sky, caterpillars nosing about a tree trunk. Higashida somehow managed to translate his reality into words, but for Rothwell the challenge was then to take those words and translate them into image and sound-the language of cinema. In another passage, he describes being assailed by involuntary movements: “It’s as if my whole body belongs to someone else, as if I’m remote-controlling a faulty robot.” But when I’m jumping it’s as if I’m shaking loose the ropes that are tying me down.” “So when something happens that affects me emotionally my body seizes up as if struck by lightning.

“I react physically to feelings of sadness and happiness,” Naoki writes, the lines voiced in the film by actor Jordan O’Donegan.

'The Reason I Jump' Trailer: Documentary Shines Spotlight On Nonspeaking Autism The Reason I Jump director Jerry Rothwell AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis

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