Best Autism Movies & TV Shows

Addie tries to get her village to make a memorial to the women who were put on trial for witch craft there. Can she challenge the way her community see her and her family?

Bob returns home for his mother’s funeral knowing that he must fulfill a promise made 30 years earlier—to care for his younger brother DJ, who is schizophrenic. When Bob eventually takes over responsibility for his younger brother’s well-being, he embarks upon the most difficult challenge of his life.

Shaun Murphy, a young surgeon with autism and savant syndrome, relocates from a quiet country life to join a prestigious hospital's surgical unit. Unable to personally connect with those around him, Shaun uses his extraordinary medical gifts to save lives and challenge the skepticism of his colleagues.

A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.

Minato Shindo has savant syndrome. His memory is amazing, but he has difficulty communicating with other people. When Minato was little, he dreamed of becoming a doctor. He met Doctor Akira Shiga and he wanted to become a pediatric surgeon. Akira was surprised by the 7-year-old's memory of the human organs and he decided to support Minato in achieving his dream. Eventually, Minato graduated from medical school and passed the national exam for medical practitioners. Now, Akira works as a director at a large hospital. He suggests to Minato to work in the pediatric surgery department at the hospital where he works.

When fifteen-year-old Tyson attends public school for the first time, his life is changed forever. While helping his father clean up after the football team, Tyson befriends champion marathon runner Aklilu. Never letting his autism hold him back, Tyson becomes determined to run his first marathon in hopes of winning his father's approval. With the help of an unlikely friend and his parents, Tyson learns that with faith in yourself and the courage to take the first step, anything is possible.

Based on a true story, Scorpion is a high-octane drama about eccentric genius Walter O’Brien and his team of brilliant misfits who comprise the last line of defense against complex, high-tech threats of the modern age. As Homeland Security’s new think tank, O’Brien’s “Scorpion” team includes Toby Curtis, an expert behaviorist who can read anyone; Happy Quinn, a mechanical prodigy; and Sylvester Dodd, a statistics guru.

Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Sam, an 18-year-old on the autism spectrum, takes a funny, yet painful, journey of self-discovery for love and independence and upends his family.

The various generations of the Hughes family, who all love, work and fight like any other clan, find they must learn to communicate all over again when the youngest member is diagnosed with autism.

Rizwan Khan, a Muslim from the Borivali section of Mumbai, has Asperger's syndrome. He marries a Hindu single mother, Mandira, in San Francisco. After 9/11, Rizwan is detained by authorities at LAX who treat him as a terrorist because of his condition and his race.

Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.

A teacher at a school for emotionally disturbed children takes an interest in one particular child who doesn't talk but emits a stream of gibberish.

Diagnosed with a mental illness halfway through his senior year of high school, a witty, introspective teen struggles to keep it a secret while falling in love with a brilliant classmate who inspires him to open his heart and not be defined by his condition.

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of top scientists in humane livestock handling.

Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.

16-year-old Henry Coles is an outsider in her new town of Reston, New York. With a major chip on her shoulder and no friends, she remains withdrawn and isolated, but everything changes when a traumatic encounter with a classmate triggers something deep within Henry— unleashing a power she cannot control.

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.

Corinne is a single mother of twin 5-year-old boys, Steven and Phillip, who are diagnosed with autism. Public school officials threaten to remove them from school due to their behavior, but through therapy, the boys are able to make major strides in their capabilities. A decade later, teens Steven and Phillip seek to prove they can handle high school while still struggling with their disorder.

Karl Childers, a mentally disabled man, has been in the custody of the state mental hospital since the age of 12 for killing his mother and her lover. Although thoroughly institutionalized, he is deemed fit to be released into the outside world.

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

Anne Hegerty, Shaun Wallace and Mark Labbett embark on a geeky road trip to uncover the cognitive abilities of animals. The brainboxes have won quizzes the world over, but wonder where they are in the pecking order of intelligent life forms.

Derek is a loyal nursing home caretaker who sees only the good in his quirky co-workers as they struggle against prejudice and shrinking budgets to care for their elderly residents.

Jeremy Collier is a Vietnam veteran who has returned home and is struggling to cope with the war experiences that haunt him. He is also at odds with his family, who cannot begin to understand what he has been through. Jeremy's battles with his family finally spiral out of control on Thanksgiving Day, when a bitter secret is revealed

Claire lives with her wealthy adopted parents in a luxurious and isolated house in the woods. She discovers a wounded and bleeding boy her age in her family's garden shed. The boy is a young drug courier from Afghanistan; shot and wounded after serving his purpose as human packing material. Claire decides to keep the boy a secret. He slowly recovers under her care; and they fall in love. When the drug dealers return and Claire's family is due to move back to the city; they decide to flee; though Claire finds it difficult to outrun her past as an abandoned child.

Three kids in a low-income neighborhood find friendship and community in an unlikely place.

Daniel Tammet has autism. He is also a savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism. This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists who are convinced he may hold the key to unlocking similar abilities in everyone. He is challenged to learn Icelandic, one of the world’s hardest languages, in just one week. Will Daniel do it? And what can we learn from this prodigious talent?

Inspired by the life of Jacqui Jackson, the story follows a self-sacrificing mother of seven children, four of whom are, in one form or another, autistic.

Two sisters take a journey of discovery and reconciliation based on the memoirs of Margaret Moorman. Christine has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and must rely on others for support even though she longs for and independent and ordinary life. When her mother dies, her sister Judy becomes responsible for her care. The two are left to face the struggles of finding common ground.

The trials and tribulations of the very large, colorful and imperfect Braverman family.

Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over after a horse crushed his skull at a rodeo. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of the United States.

Two drifters, one a gentle but slow giant, try to make money working the fields during the Depression so they can fulfill their dreams.

Nicholas, a neurotic 25-year-old, hasn’t been particularly present in his siblings’ lives, but when their single dad reveals that he is terminally ill, the girls have to cope with not only a devastating loss but also the realization that Nicholas is the one who will have to rise to the occasion, move in and hold it all together.

Henry struggles to bond with his estranged son, Gabriel, who suffers from a brain tumor that prevents him from forming new memories. With Gabriel unable to shed the beliefs and interests that caused their physical and emotional distance, Henry must learn to embrace his son's choices and try to connect with him through music.

High school football coach, Harold Jones befriends Radio, a mentally-challenged man who becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina. Their friendship extends over several decades, where Radio transforms from a shy, tormented man into an inspiration to his community.

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

A former boy band star unexpectedly gets a second shot at success when he forms a bond with a gifted young drummer.

Two young men are seriously affected by the Vietnam war. One of them has always been obsessed with birds - but now believes he really is a bird, and has been sent to a mental hospital. Can his friend help him pull through?

Fresh out of college and stuck at his New Jersey home without a clear path forward, 22-year-old Andrew begins working as a party starter for bar/bat mitzvahs—where he strikes up a unique friendship with a young mom and her teenage daughter.

An investigation into one woman’s memory as she‘s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

A lonely, down-on-her-luck waitress meets a handsome, quirky jewelry store clerk and thinks that maybe, finally, she's met Mr. Right. The more Molly gets to know Gus, the more she's intrigued by him. But she's also mystified. Gus is absent-minded, preoccupied. Is he hiding something? The short answer is: yes. He's reluctant to share with her that since suffering a brain aneurysm, he's totally lost his short-term memory. Every day is a brand new day, his life starts anew. Every day he sees Molly he struggles to remember who she is and what she represents. Every day, he has to fall in love with her all over again.

A teenage con artist tricks a desperate mother into hiring her as a live-in companion for her autistic daughter.

As a math savant uncooks the books for a new client, the Treasury Department closes in on his activities and the body count starts to rise.

A mentally ill young woman finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton.

An autistic boy and his father who returns from war with PTSD help each other find peace with the help of martial arts and music. As a man, Rob also learns to follow his heart when he finds a woman who loves him just as he is.

Follows five autistic children as they work together to create and perform a live musical production.

Jack Palmer is a social worker whose job has taken precedence over his personal life. Mainly, his job is to help four mentally challenged men live regular lives in a home. They consist of: Norman, who works at a donut shop and has a thing for keys; Barry, who thinks he is a golf pro and doesn't communicate well with his father; Arnold, who is into all things Russian and has a habit of spending money; and Lucien, who is into Spider Man and must testify before the state senate. Jack wants to help them, but he also thinks it is time to move on with his life. The hard part is trying to say goodbye to the guys he cares about.

A year after his father's death, Oskar, a troubled young boy, discovers a mysterious key he believes was left for him by his father and embarks on a scavenger hunt to find the matching lock.

The biography of former Beatle, John Lennon—narrated by Lennon himself—with extensive material from Yoko Ono's personal collection, previously unseen footage from Lennon's private archives, and interviews with David Bowie, his first wife Cynthia, second wife Yoko Ono and sons Julian and Sean.