FILM REVIEW · DISABILITY RIGHTS · HEARTLAND FILM FESTIVAL 2026 · WHERE IS THE FURY CAMPAIGN
Jennifer Msumba’s story is heartbreaking, infuriating, and unexpectedly hopeful. More importantly, it is a story we NEED to hear.
I have to admit, I was reluctant to go.
When I learned about The Fish Don’t Care When It Rains, premiering at the Heartland Film Festival, I knew enough about the subject matter to anticipate that it would be difficult to watch. I expected to leave sad, angry, and frustrated by the cruelty people with disabilities have experienced in places supposedly designed to help them.
And, quite frankly, part of me just wanted to protect my peace.
But then I had to confront the uncomfortable reality that I, like you, have the privilege of choosing whether we want to see or hear this story.
Jennifer Msumba never had the choice of whether she would have to live it.
So I went. And I am incredibly grateful that I did.
Yes, the story was hard to watch in many places. It’s a story that SHOULD make us all uncomfortable.
The Fish Don’t Care When It Rains tells the story of Jennifer Msumba, an autistic woman with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, who spent seven years at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Massachusetts.
The center uses painful electric shocks as a form of behavioral control for people with disabilities. These shocks are administered through devices attached 24 hours a day to a person’s body, with the stated purpose of discouraging certain behaviors.
The film gives Jennifer the opportunity to tell, in her own words, what it was like to live under this system.
She recounts experiences that are difficult to comprehend happening in the United States of America in the 90s and early 2000s, but then you get to learn that this is not simply a relic of some distant, less enlightened era… these same practices are still being used at this very same facility today, in 2026.
Jennifer describes the fear, the loss of autonomy, and the psychological consequences of living somewhere that could punish her with pain, where her body, every part of it, no longer belonged to her.
At one point, Jennifer recalls that she had to tell herself she wasn’t human to keep from going insane.
That is a devastating thing to hear from someone describing a place where she was sent to receive “help”.
The center continues to operate, and its use of electric-shock devices has remained the subject of legal challenges, federal regulatory efforts, and disability rights advocacy. The FDA moved to ban these devices in 2020, but a federal appeals court overturned the ban in 2021. A new ban was proposed in 2024, and the effort has continued to face delays.
So, as much as this is a story about what happened. It is also a story about what we are continuing to allow.
How? No really, How?
One of the most disturbing realities surrounding the Judge Rotenberg Center is that its use of electric shocks has drawn international condemnation.
In 2013, Juan E. Méndez, then the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, concluded that the use of these shocks violated the rights of students subjected to them under the UN Convention Against Torture.
Think about that!
Practices condemned under international human rights standards have been defended in the United States as treatment for people with disabilities.
This shock system could not be used on terrorists because it would violate their human rights, but it can be used on children who don’t conform to what our society has deemed as “normal.”
We need to really look in the mirror and ask ourselves: How have we arrived at a place where something recognized as a serious human rights violation can be justified when the person experiencing it has a disability?
And perhaps more importantly, why is there no quick or easy way to get this to stop?
These are not comfortable questions. But they are questions we have to ask, and then we have to demand answers to.
On a personal note, something that will stay with me long past this moment of reflection is what a remarkable job Jennifer and the directors did of bringing to light that this is not a simple a story about bad people doing bad things.
The film reveals something much more complicated, and perhaps more frightening… The reality that average people, people who by all other accounts are “good” people can become part of a system that causes such extraordinary harm.
Parents and caregivers can find themselves desperate for answers. They may be struggling to find appropriate services, navigating behaviors they don’t understand, or facing situations they feel unequipped to manage.
They turn to professionals and institutions they believe have the expertise to help their children.
And somewhere along the way, families can lose control. Decisions become the responsibility of professionals, administrators, courts, and systems that clearly do not adequately recognize the humanity or autonomy of the person at the center of it all.
And we, the public, play a role, too!
We allow people to be placed behind walls, away from their families and communities. We call it treatment, care, or protection. And because we don’t see what happens inside, we rarely have to confront the consequences of our apathy despite being complicit in the harm being done.
We can convince ourselves
- That someone else knows best.
- That difficult circumstances justify extraordinary measures.
- That something must be humane because it is legal, regulated, or carried out by professionals.
But now and throughout history we have seen time and time again that calling something care does not make it caring.
And though most of us would be more comfortable not having this conversation, it is one we have to keep having, particularly in light of the current political moment we are in.
Why this story matters right here in Indiana
As someone working in disability advocacy in Indiana, I couldn’t help but think about the conversations happening here at home.
There are countless people having discussions about institutional settings, the future of home and community-based services, Medicaid funding, and the rights of people with disabilities to live in their communities.
We talk about the Olmstead decision and the decades of progress made toward ensuring people with disabilities are not unnecessarily segregated from society.
But the progress represented by Olmstead was never just about where someone lives.
It was about dignity, choice, self-determination, and the recognition that people with disabilities deserve the same opportunities to participate in their communities as anyone else.
Jennifer’s story reminds us what is at stake when we move away from those principles.
It is important to recognize that not every residential setting is the Judge Rotenberg Center, and not every professional involved in institutional care causes harm.
But we should also recognize that institutional systems can create conditions in which a person’s voice becomes secondary to the decisions being made about them.
When people are isolated, when oversight is inadequate, and when the people receiving services have little power to challenge what happens to them, the potential for abuse grows.
That is why lived experience matters so much in these conversations.
We can debate funding models, service delivery systems, and public policy forever. But we cannot allow those discussions to become so abstract that we forget the human lives that are changed by these decisions.
Jennifer’s story makes those consequences impossible to ignore.
And yet this is so much more than a story of suffering.
For all its difficult subject matter, The Fish Don’t Care When It Rains is not the relentlessly bleak documentary I feared it would be.
In fact, one of the film’s greatest accomplishments is the way its creators balance the heartbreak of Jennifer’s experiences with her humor, creativity, music, and remarkable determination.
It is raw and deeply emotional. It does not shy away from what happened or attempt to make the cruelty easier to digest.
But it also allows us to know Jennifer beyond what she endured.
We meet a woman who loves music. A woman who creates. A woman with a sense of humor, an artistic voice, and dreams that extend far beyond her past and well into the future.
A woman who refuses to let the worst things that happened to her become the only things that define her.
Jennifer is not simply the subject of this documentary. She is also one of its directors, its screenwriter, a producer, and a contributor to its music.
That distinction matters.
For so much of her life, other people controlled the narrative about who she was, what she needed, and what was best for her.
Now, she is telling her own story.
And she is using that story to advocate for people who are still experiencing the practices she survived.
The filmmakers have done something extraordinary by creating a film that confronts injustice without reducing Jennifer to a victim or asking audiences to see her only through the lens of trauma.
There is true joy here. There is laughter. There is music. There is the future and all that comes next. And there is a powerful reminder that people with disabilities are so much more than their diagnoses, their support needs, or the things that have happened to them.
What happens after we know?
I left the theater feeling many of the things I expected to feel. I am angry. I am heartbroken. I am disgusted by the knowledge that practices like these have been allowed to continue.
And I left feeling something I hadn’t anticipated – Hope.
Not because the film offers an easy resolution. It doesn’t. And not because Jennifer’s experiences can somehow be made acceptable by what she has accomplished since. They cannot.
I feel hopeful because Jennifer has reclaimed her voice, and because of her willingness to be so publicly vulnerable, this film gives the rest of us an opportunity to do something with what we now know.
One of the most dangerous things we can do as a society is look away from injustice simply because confronting it makes us uncomfortable.
I’ve already admitted that I understand the desire to protect our peace. But there are people who have never had the luxury of looking away. So the least we can do is be willing to see them, hear them, and take seriously what they are telling us.
The Fish Don’t Care When It Rains is a film worth seeing!
Jennifer Msumba has done the difficult work of sharing her story.
Now we have a responsibility to decide what we will do with it.
And I hope that starts with filling the seats at the next screening.
See the film. Hear Jennifer’s story. Support her work.
Learn more and take action! The filmmakers encourage everyone to join the movement opposing painful electric-shock behavioral interventions and supporting efforts to end their use at the Judge Rotenberg Center.
The Fish Don’t Care When It Rains
Heartland Film Festival
The festival lists additional screenings Wednesday, October 14, and Thursday, October 15, at 3 p.m. The Thursday showing is at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema at The Square. The film is also available through the festival’s virtual platform.
Festival tickets and schedule · Watch online
Watch the Trailer
Shouting at Leaves
Jennifer’s 2021 memoir shares her experiences growing up autistic, navigating the mental health system, and rebuilding her life. It is another opportunity to hear her story directly from her.
Learn more and purchase Jennifer’s book
Jennifer Msumba’s Music
Jennifer’s music includes the albums Pretending Gets Me Through and Atypical, as well as the documentary’s original theme song. Her music offers another way to appreciate her creativity beyond the film.
Listen to Jennifer’s music · Jennifer’s website
