This May 18th, Chelsea in New York will host DISORDER, the rare disease film festival. This will be the third DISORDER festival that provides an opportunity for filmmakers to share their rare disease stories with a live audience of patients, advocates, researchers, biotech leaders, and other filmmakers.
Past films have included academy award nominated short Our Curse, about young parents adjusting to a newborn with a rare central hypoventilation syndrome, and California Women’s Film Festival winner, Special Blood, about 4 people coming together after the healthcare system had failed them.
This year expects to be another strong showing of great films to raise awareness about the unique stories – funny, sad, heartbreaking, and uplifting – that many in the rare disease community face on a regular basis.
In an exclusive interview with CheckRare, the founders of DISORDER, Bo Bigelow and Daniel DeFabio, said they are currently reviewing 43 submissions to determine which will be presented this May. The deadline for submitting a film is February 29, 2020 (i.e., Rare Disease Day).
“It’s a pretty good mix of stuff. We’ve got a lot of documentaries definitely but some new stuff that really is exciting and different,” noted Bigelow, adding that one of the submissions is a post-apocalyptic thriller in which the main protagonist has Phenylketonuria (PKU) and struggles to find a PKU-compliant diet.
A trailer for the upcoming film festival is below.
Sponsors/partners for this year’s festival include Takeda, Horizon, Ovid, the Menkes Foundation, Signant Health, Inspire, Global Genes, and CheckRare.
