In a Different Key

Photo: Title card

Credit: WGBH

A true story of love, difference and the fight to belong.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book of the same name by journalists Caren Zucker and John Donvan – In a Different Key, the film follows the film's producer, the mother of an autistic son as she finds and then befriends the first child ever diagnosed with autism – Donald Triplett, who still lives in the small Mississippi town where he was born nearly 90 years ago. In a Different Key airs Friday, January 13, 2023 at 9 p.m on WXXI-TV,

Today, the rate of diagnosed Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has reached the level of 1 in 44 children. In a question relevant to many, co-director Caren Zucker seeks answers to the unknowable: will the non-autistic majority embrace and protect her child when she is no longer here. “Really, it’s an untold story of an unrecognized civil rights movement,” says Zucker, “but it’s also a love story, where the arc of justice is really bending in the right direction – just not fast enough for mothers like me.”