Who Am I To Stop It is a documentary about the traumatic brain injury community made by a filmmaker with disabilities from brain injury. It follows three artists as they navigate social isolation, stigma, and rebuilding their identities. They practice the arts to reconnect to their own sense of self-pride and to their larger communities. Rather than emphasize the injuries themselves or highlight medical aspects of disability, we explore consequences of institutional and internalized ableism. Through visual arts, music, and personal narrative, the subjects explore questions around poverty, sexuality, faith, family, success, and community. Using a biopsychosocial framework, Who Am I To Stop It deftly uncovers what lies beneath the surface for so many peers with brain injury and their communities.
The documentary weaves together three distinct stories that cross age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, class, family support, and disability. Despite their different life contexts, the film reveals how brain injury survivors are complex, dynamic people with creative drive and agency. In the film, we witness interruptions to career plans, relationships, education, and family ties. Likewise, the viewer celebrates a sense of accomplishment as all three subjects present their art publicly for the first time with their new identities as peers with brain injury. Each subject proactively works to challenge their own and others' views of their worth and value by creating and sharing their art. By emphasizing daily life and storytelling over expert interviews, viewers are invited to question their assumptions about people with brain injury and what role the community can play in ending stigma and unlearning ableism. This film contains mature themes and adult language.