From the Nashville Film Festival
We Can Be Heroes: Celebrating Difference
In the mid-60s, my brothers were diagnosed as autistic. It took awhile, because they were beautiful twin babies, perfectly healthy. Unlike Downs Syndrome, there are often no outer indications of autism. But after a year when they weren’t talking, the guessing began. Neurodivergence was not yet a common concept; in fact, the term wasn’t created until 1998. Doctors had no idea what to do. But Mom, a skilled elementary school teacher, was also a realist who could deal with any child, however or whoever they were. So our family had to find our own way, recognize their differences, and seek activities that would enrich their abilities. Our journey is what drew me to We Can Be Heroes.
Billed as a documentary on “neurodivergent, queer, and self-proclaimed ‘nerdy’ teenagers,” We Can Be Heroes traces the journey of the teens attending Camp Wayfinder, a live-action role playing (LARP) experience in upstate New York. Co-produced and co-directed by Carina Mia Wong and Alex Simmons, it premiered at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival. This 1 hr, 26 min film was released by Concordia Studios of Muck Media.
The one-week camp consists of a few days of introduction, two days of medieval/renaissance-style role-playing, and a final day of assessing the experience. Considered as a standard narrative, the three main characters are Cloud, age 11 (White Plains NY); Dexter, 15 (Manhattan); and Abby, 17 (Sacramento), while other campers and camp counselors are supporting cast.
During the intro days, campers get to know one another, choose the pronouns for their name-tags, and are reminded to respect personal boundaries. Some have already learned this lesson. Two bunkmates, for example, are grateful to find that each has been diagnosed with a variant of autism, grateful to spend time with someone who shares their experiences. A telling moment occurs when one says to the other, “Are you okay with hugs?” (Physical contact is often an overt issue with autistic people.) The other said it was okay—and they hugged. I remembered teaching my brothers to hug.
Campers are also kindly, but firmly, told that bullying will not be tolerated. Then they are introduced to “The Last Green,” a story outline created by counselors Clare and Claire. In the story, a verdant land of magical creatures has always been surrounded by a void. The void is simply a fact of life, not in any way feared until it begins to shrink inwards squeezing the green into a smaller and smaller space. The inhabitants must decide whether to try to flee, fight, or accept fate. Training for role-playing interactions to come, they learn: enjoyment is key, cooperation is vital, and accepting gains or losses with grace is desired. Most of the story will be improvised, so campers choose a character that represents who they are— or who they’d like to be.
During two pandemic years, prior to camp, Cloud had been to three different schools. Red Flag. With a college-level vocabulary and MIT-level arrogance Cloud might remind you of a proto-Sheldon Cooper. Obsessed with swordplay and identifying with Darth Vader, Cloud is clearly threatened by any scenario where the top position in the social hierarchy is held by anyone else. This cherubic-looking child envisions a character “too cool for their world [where] everyone is beneath them.”
Dexter, a lanky teen with an upper-class British accent, serves as narrator. Having been home-schooled his entire life, this is only the second time he’d sleep away from his parents. It’s not hard to imagine this aspiring writer turning into an awkwardly charming young man. During the camp, his anxieties about ticks and his crush on a girl he had met at camp last year dissipate. As his alter ego, he creates a good-hearted wizard whose spells never quite work out, what would be called a “squib” in Harry-Potter lore.
Abby is the most poignant character in the film. The victim of two potentially deadly gastric conditions, it isn’t clear, initially, that the camp will be able to accommodate her, so it was a joy to see her there. With humor, she explains her occasional need for a feeding tube and the machinery that runs it. She instructs fellow campers on how to approach her when she’s wearing it and how to avoid harming it when it’s charging. It was moving that the LARP character she chose would be a healer.
Throughout the film, the improv environment and costuming redolent of a medieval or renaissance fair is periodically accompanied by Marin Marais’ baroque masterpiece “Les Folies d’Espagne,” played on the historic relative of the cello, the viola da gamba. Although la folia is a Spanish dance, folies is also French for quirkiness or mania. Irony?
The cinematography sometimes effectively spotlights close-up shots like Dexter’ awkward foot movements as he discusses the girl he likes. But aerial shots of the camp’s Hudson Valley green spaces work metaphorically as a different, real, yet magical world where these special campers have a whole universe open to be themselves.
This is when another red flag concerning Cloud joins those posed by the three schools in two years. Counselors and campers are clearly troubled that this child, whose foam sword has had to be taken away after the first day of roleplay, wants to be either the leader of the clan, or to form a “death cult” where cult members could be convinced to commit suicide by walking into the void. Later, after an unnamed altercation, Cloud is removed from the camp and sent to a “therapeutic boarding school.”
Dexter, Abby, et al, however, grow in happy confidence. Abby finds the yelling and falling to the ground and healing the wounded in battle scenes “cathartic”; Miranda finds it “liberating.” Considering Abby’s health challenges and Miranda’s extreme shyness, this is heartening. Jud, head counselor, remembers how much the camp had done for him as a lonely gay teen. He is determined to carry on that legacy. Claire, remembers how costumes so seldom fit her, so she chooses a wide variety of sizes, determined that no camper should ever feel body-shamed. Lynsey, the only minority counselor, admires the campers’ courage in dealing with their differences, determined to deal with her own fear of insects in the wild.
After the two days of role play are over, the campers lie on the grass with their eyes closed as counselors move from camper to camper whispering, “Can I appreciate you?” Once the camper consents, a counselor kneels and gently praises specific areas of growth they’ve seen during the week. To see Dexter’s anxiety melt away as a gratified smile graces his young face is heart-rending. In the end credits, we find that he goes on to write the third volume of his stalled animé-style Atlantis trilogy. Abby goes on to college, majoring in graphic design. Clearly this camp recognizes and celebrates their differences, while enriching their lives. The filmmakers have told a story of accepting difference that we all need to hear. I wish it had been available decades ago.
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Y Kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist, specializing in dance history who recently earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works have been published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Columbia Journal, Mitos Magazín, The Hunger Mountain Review, and The Salt Collective, among others. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for relatives.
