Deaf President Now! (now streaming on Apple TV+) is easily a leading candidate for the best documentary of 2025. A collaborative directorial effort between documentary stalwart Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman) and reality-TV star and deaf advocate Nyle DiMarco (winner of both America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars), the film chronicles the 1988 student protest at Gallaudet University – the world’s only all-deaf university – in response to the institution’s selection of a hearing person as its president. They gather key activist leaders to tell the story of a key moment in the American civil rights movement, and the result is undeniably inspiring.
The Gist: “What’s the microphone for?” laughs Bridgetta Bourne-Firl as she sits in front of a black background for an interview. She speaks in sign language, but an off-screen voice translates her words for the hearing audience as she speaks about her part in leading the weeklong Gallaudet protest of 1988. We also meet three of her compatriots in the outspoken and animated Jerry Covell and Tim Rarus, and the more softspoken student body president Greg Hlibok. We see them in two contexts: seated for staring-at-the-camera Interrotron-style interviews, and in archival footage standing up and passionately, fervently signing in front of large crowds of fellow student protesters. Our appreciation for these people and who they are only grows as the film progresses.
It’s worth noting that these four don’t always agree with each other – Jerry bristles a little at Bridgetta’s ardent feminism, and some weren’t always confident in the relatively meek Greg’s ability to represent the students – but they were absolutely united in their desire to see their beloved Gallaudet led by a person who truly understood what it meant to be deaf. The university was founded in 1864 with the endorsement of none other than President Abraham Lincoln, the first school of its kind on the planet. But in the 124 years since, the place was led by a person who could hear, selected by a board of primarily hearing people. Students not only didn’t feel properly represented, but asserted that until one of their own was president, they’d continue to be seen as objects of condescension and pity who needed to be “fixed” and weren’t capable of leading and educating themselves.
Gallaudet desperately needed to progress, and one person stood in its way: Jane Bassett Spilman, chair of the Gallaudet board. She didn’t know sign language. She was a haughty, moneyed aristocrat who’ll remind you of Margaret Thatcher or Nancy Reagan. She believed she knew better than the university’s students and faculty. (Greg’s assessment of Spilman? “Uh. That woman.”) And the board she led passed over two deaf candidates to choose Elizabeth Zinser to be president. Zinser could not only hear and didn’t know how to sign, but she had no experience working with the deaf, and her background in medicine rendered her another president who believed deaf people should be “fixed.” And this angered the students. This. Would. Not. Do.
So Greg, Bridgetta, Tim and Jerry rallied the students, locked down the campus, parked buses in front of driveways and demanded change. There were no classes or traditional activities at Gallaudet that week. The students wanted a deaf president. They wanted Spilman out as chair. They wanted a majority of the board to be deaf people. And they wanted no reprisals for staging the protest. Eventually, they allowed Spilman on campus so they could hear her out. She stands in front of a podium clogged with microphones, in a gymnasium filled with angry students – and she doubles down. Students scream and whoop. They pull the fire alarms, filling the room with ringing bells. “It’s awfully difficult to talk over this loud noise,” Spilman states smugly. Counterpoint? “Wasn’t loud for me,” Greg says. “If she had been able to sign, she wouldn’t have had a problem.”
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Netflix doc Crip Camp chronicles the accomplishments of attendees of Camp Jened in the 1970s, where disabled people met and eventually planted the seeds of the disability rights movement in America.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s safe to say, if Greg, Tim, Bridgette and Jerry’s personalities didn’t burst off the screen, the film wouldn’t be nearly as engaging.
Memorable Dialogue: When Spilman demanded that campus be reopened before she’d meet with students, Jerry shares how they responded with the one sign that even people who don’t speak sign language know: The ol’ double birds.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Go ahead – try not to be inspired by Deaf President Now! Guggenheim and DiMarco capture the righteous spirit of the movement with robust style and key players’ passionate voices. Sure, the filmmakers frame the conflict in somewhat simplistic terms – good vs. evil, progressive vs. conservative, young whippersnappers vs. old fuddy-duddies – but they lend nuance to the story with sharp, pithy profiles of the protest leaders, revealing their personalities and backgrounds, and the experiences endured by some of their deaf parents, who were essentially outcasts in a world ruled by the hearing. The film doesn’t allow us to see these Gallaudet alumni as an amorphous group, but a collection of individuals brought together to form their own flourishing community.
One key figure in this story is I. King Jordan, the Gallaudet dean who was one of the candidates passed over to be president. Jerry says Jordan is “deaf, but not deaf deaf.” Unlike Jerry and the other protest leaders, he wasn’t born without hearing, but lost it in a motorcycle accident. He found himself caught in the middle of the conflict when Spilman strongarmed him into supporting the board’s decision, and he publicly acquiesced to her unspoken demands – he was worried about being fired – before realizing he did the wrong thing, eventually coming to understand the distinction that Jerry made. It’s a salient example of the dynamics of discrimination, a subtextual illustration of how societies wrestle with concepts like integration, individuality, and understanding and accepting people’s differences.
Guggenheim and DiMarco deftly balance three vital components of the story: the rollercoaster drama of the week of protests, the personalities involved and the history and methodologies of deaf education. The result is a film that’s as thorough as it is succinct – it clocks in at a crisp 100 minutes – buoyed by ebullient needle drops (“Fight the Power,” “Mr. Blue Sky”) and a propulsive sense of urgency. In some ways, the events of the protest feel charmingly dated for those of us rendered cynical by the current divided state of America. But Deaf President Now! will make you feel like good things, the right things, are still possible, and we might just want to savor that feeling.
Our Call: Essential documentary. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.