Best Special Needs Movies & TV Shows

The life-saving superpowers and extraordinary bravery of some of the world’s most amazing dogs. The film follows six pups on their adventures: Halo, a puppy training to join an elite American disaster response team; Henry; an avalanche rescue dog in the Canadian Rockies; Reef, a Newfoundland lifeguard in the Italian Coast Guard; Ricochet, a surf and therapy boi in California; and the dynamic duo Tipper and Tony, who work to save endangered species in Africa.

A dedicated teacher tries to reach out to juvenile delinquent students at a London alternative school.

The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.

Georges has Down syndrome, living at a mental-institution, Harry is a busy businessman, giving lectures for young aspiring salesmen. He is successful in his business life, but his social life is a disaster since his wife left him and took their two children with her. This weekend his children came by train to meet him, but Harry, working as always, forgot to pick them up. Neither his wife or his children want to see him again and he is driving around on the country roads, anguished and angry. He almost runs over Georges, on the run from the institution since everybody else went home with their parents except him, whose mother is dead. Harry tries to get rid of Georges but he won't leave his new friend. Eventually a special friendship forms between the two of them, a friendship which makes Harry a different person.

Dr Dennis Slamon, an American oncologist, discovers a treatment that could possibly cure breast cancer without radiation or chemotherapy. He tries to look for ways to fund the medication.

Dramatisation of the true story of the life of Neil "Nello" Baldwin. Born with a mild learning disability but without the burden of social embarrassment & how his inexhaustible ability to see the good in any situation overcame any stigma society tried to label him with.

Three women’s lives intersect at a lakeside resort and are forever changed by the love of a special needs boy.

Maya DiMeo is a mom on a mission who will do anything for her husband, Jimmy, and kids Ray, Dylan, and JJ, her eldest son with special needs. As Maya fights injustices both real and imagined, the family works to make a new home for themselves and searches for just the right person to give JJ his “voice.”

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.

Mike Kersjes is a special-education teacher and football coach in Michigan. Mike doesn’t talk down to his "special" students. He respects them, and he believes they’re capable of achieving great things. When Mike hears about Space Camp, a competitive education program at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, he gets an idea. Even though the program is designed for gifted science students, Mike decides participating in the summer program would do wonders for the self-esteem of his young students, one in particular who wants to be an astronaut.

A stubborn and hotheaded minor league basketball coach is forced to train a Special Olympics team when he is sentenced to community service.

A woman's schizophrenia affects her relationships with her husband and son.

Life Goes On is a television series that aired on ABC from September 12, 1989, to May 23, 1993. The show centers on the Thatcher family living in suburban Chicago: Drew, his wife Elizabeth, and their children Paige, Rebecca, and Charles, who is known as Corky. Life Goes On was the first television series to have a major character with Down syndrome.

Shaun and Daz are vibrant kids, wasted by their experience of education. All they have is friendship and Shaun's first love Katy. From the moment Shaun steps into our world he is bound to lose. Labeled as a violent bully he destroys himself and Daz with him. Shaun has twelve years to reflect on an intense summer of love, sex and loyalty. But Daz's imminent death forces Shaun to confront his past.

During a blizzard in 1964, Dr. David Henry delivers his son Paul with the help of nurse Caroline. But when Henry realizes his wife is also carrying a girl with Down syndrome, he hands the second child over to Caroline without his wife's knowledge. Henry's fateful decision yields grave consequences for his family over the next 20 years.

A lonely young boy feels different from everyone else. Desperate for a friend, he seeks solace and refuge in his ever-present cell phone and tablet. When a mysterious creature uses the boy’s devices against him to break into our world, his parents must fight to save their son from the monster beyond the screen.

A three-paneled look at the worldwide AIDS crisis: in Montreal, a porn actor schemes to pass his mandatory blood test; a young nun makes a personal sacrifice for the benefit of a South African village; in rural China, a black market operative posing as a government-sanctioned blood drawer jeopardizes an entire village's safety

A mentally challenged girl proves herself to be every bit as capable as her "perfect" sister when she moves into an apartment and begins going to college.

Milly and Louis, and their recently-widowed mom, Charlene, move to a new neighborhood. Once there, they all deal with a variety of personal problems, but Milly finds a friend in Eric, her autistic next door neighbor. Eric has a fascination with flight, and as the story progresses, he exerts an enthralling force of change on all those around him.

A love story between two savants with Asperger's syndrome, a kind of autism, whose conditions sabotage their budding relationship.

Directed by Richard C. Sarafian, this 1969 British children's film stars Mark Lester as a young boy, unable to speak, who befriends both a wild colt with blue eyes and a falcon named "Lady". The cast also includes John Mills, Gordon Jackson and Sylvia Sims.

Set in New York City, the epicenter of a phenomenon cropping up in communities across the United States, "Nursery University" reveals the oddly competitive process of nursery school admissions. The film tells the story of five families attempting to place their toddlers in preschool classrooms that have limited space and high price tags.

When new teacher Steve Drake joins the faculty at a school for special-needs students, his unorthodox instruction methods raise eyebrows. But attitudes begin to change when he makes a connection with a particularly unruly student.

A woman is pursued by her murderous, psychopathic twin sister in the days leading up to their birthday.

50 Cent stars as gifted college running back Deon in this touching drama. Deon's world turns upside down when an unexpected crisis jeopardizes his professional ambitions -- and causes him to look at himself and his life in a new way.

Hallmark Hall of Fame presents the story of a mysterious woman claiming to be the deceased daughter of a rich man tries to solve the problems of his untrusting son and supposedly physically and mentally handicaped daughter. But one question stands in her way: is she really Caroline?

In the 1940s a 40-year-old woman with five healthy children gives birth to a girl with Down's syndrome.

Molly McKay is a profoundly autistic twenty-something woman who has lived in an institution from a young age following her parents' death in a car accident. When the institution must close due budget cuts, Molly is left in the care of her neurotypical, older brother, Buck McKay, an advertising executive and perennial bachelor. Buck makes her undergo an experimental medical treatment, with unexpectedly drastic results.

This wacky prequel to the 1994 blockbuster goes back to the lame-brained Harry and Lloyd's days as classmates at a Rhode Island high school, where the unprincipled principal puts the pair in remedial courses as part of a scheme to fleece the school.