Good news story alert! 'Patrice the Movie', a powerful documentary about a couple who cannot marry without jeopardising their disability benefits, has won an Emmy 😍❤️
.png)
‘Patrice the Movie’, a powerful documentary about a couple who cannot marry without jeopardising their disability benefits, has won the Emmy for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
The documentary rom-com tells the story of Patrice Jetter, an American disability rights activist, who wants to marry and move in with her partner, Gerry Wickham. However if they marry, they will risk losing a significant amount of their benefits due to outdated laws around the civil rights of disabled people.
“We made this movie as a love letter to all the disabled people like us who can’t get married or even live with their partner without losing their Medicaid benefits, which they need in order to survive,” Jetter said in her acceptance speech.
The film spotlights the ongoing fight for disability rights, the systemic failures that disabled people are forced to endure, and the cuts to benefits that’s affecting disabled people across the country.
Despite the difficulties Jetter and Wickham face, the film focuses on their determination and the power of their love. As Wickham said in the film: “They can stop us from getting married, they can stop us from living together, but they’re never gonna stop us from loving each other.”
While the screen industry has a long way to go to improve the representation of disabled people, this Emmy winning documentary is a big win and demonstrates the inequality that disabled people continue to fight against.