PBS has slated the premiere of the documentary In a Different Key, based on the eponymous Pulitzer finalist book, for Dec. 13.
The film, presented by Boston public media institution GBH, centers on co-director and journalist Caren Zucker’s search for the first-ever child diagnosed with autism, Donald Triplett. The film will trace the growing friendship between the Mississippi-based Triplett and Zucker, who has an autistic son, as she grapples with the future for her child once she is gone. In a Different Key will premiere on PBS at 9 pm ET.
Fellow journalist John Donvan, a longtime network correspondent and producer, co-directed the film with Zucker, a former producer for ABC World News Tonight and Nightline. The film features original music by Wynton Marsalis and was funded by Liberty Mutual.
“Really, it’s an untold story of an unrecognized civil rights movement,” Zucker says in a statement of the film. “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.”
Zucker and Donvan co-wrote the book In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, which was published in 2016 and became a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Zucker and Donvan first established a relationship with Triplett when they co-wrote the 2010 The Atlantic magazine story, “Autism’s First Child,” which was included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2011 compendium.
Triplett was deemed “Case 1” in a 1943 article that reported on what is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder, or autism. He has lived in his hometown of Forest, Mississippi his whole life, which Zucker and Donvan described as “long, happy, [and] surprising” in their Atlantic story.
“We hope the film touches audiences that don’t necessarily have that direct connection to autism,” added Dovnan in a statement. “Every community can be part of the solution for supporting people on the spectrum, including where they work, live, go to school and beyond.”
