DOCUMENTARY SERIES - ENGLISH - USA

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SERIES CREATOR, WRITER & PRODUCER: Lowell Handler

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Logline: Of Different Minds: Tales of Neurodiversity and Other Enigmas aims to expand public understanding of the challenges and sometimes blessings that come with neurodiversity. What makes this series unlike any other is that it speaks from a place of unusual authority—our directors are themselves neurodivergent or share their lives directly with someone who is.

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 Episodes: 

1. BIPOLAR DISORDER

2. DYSLEXIA AND DYSGRAPHIA

3. TOURETTE’S SYNDROME

4. ATTENTION DEFICIT-HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

5. ALZHEIMER’S

6. AUTISM SPECTRUM

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​Lead Production Company: Handler Productions, MediaFusion Entertainment

Senior Lender: ScreenLight Media Fund

Fiscal Sponsor: ???

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Production Team: 

• Writer/Creator: Lowell Handler

• Producers: Lowell Handler, Carol Bidault de l’Isle

• Music: Grammy-winning music producer Malcolm Burn

• Director of Photography: Emmy-winning DP Wolfgang Held

• Marketing: Paul Cadieux of Filmoption International, an Oscar-nominated and Genie Award-winning producer

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Location: New York

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Production Start Date: February 2027

 

​Comps: Of Different Minds is a unique series that combines aspects of HBO’s intimate character docufollow Asperger’s Are Us with Netflix’s scientific deep dive, The Mind Explained. It is set apart by the fact that all our directors are themselves neurodivergent or the partners or caregivers for someone who is. Their personal stories of discovery, coping, and acceptance will be central to the narrative. Each of our filmmakers has been chosen not only for these experiences but also for their proven ability to communicate with a general audience.

 

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Episodes & Directors: 

• BIPOLAR DISORDER: Emma Kidd, an award-winning director, offers a unique perspective on the complexities of bipolar disorder, having lived with Type I bipolar disorder and made films about it.

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• TOURETTE’S SYNDROME and OCD: Directed by Lowell Handler. Handler, a photojournalist, served as associate producer, photographer, cowriter, narrator, and presenter of the Emmy-nominated PBS film Twitch and Shout and is the author of a memoir of the same name about his life with Tourette’s syndrome.

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• ATTENTION DEFICIT-HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER: Directed by Danae Elon. A filmmaker, producer, and cinematographer whose documentary films have won dozens of awards. Elon is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. All three of her teenagers were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood.

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• ALZHEIMER’S: Directed by Jason Sussberg. Award-winning filmmaker known for We Are As Gods, Bill Nye: Science Guy, and Lithium: Manic City—and producer of Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer’s—Jason returns to lithium’s unexpected role at the intersection of mental health and memory. Sussberg draws on his personal experience to explore the unexpected journey of lithium, mined from the earth’s crust, into the human brain through the treatment of his own family.

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• AUTISM SPECTRUM: Directed by David Petersen. A director and writer, David is both Emmy- and Oscar-nominated. His most recent film, Lift, is being distributed by Paramount. A look at autism through the personal experience of the director’s brother Mark, whose autism profoundly affected the relationships within the family, ultimately leading to his institutionalization.

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• DYSLEXIA AND DYSGRAPHIA: Dyslexia is more than a learning difference—it is a different way of processing language and symbols. In the dyslexic brain, signals between the eyes, ears, and language centers follow alternate pathways, creating both challenges and unique patterns of thought.

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About Series Creator: Lowell Handler

Lowell Handler is a photographer, filmmaker, and author whose pictures have appeared in Life, Newsweek, Elle, U.S. News & World Report, The (London) Sunday Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s magazines, as well as many journals from Brazil to Japan.

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Handler served as associate producer, narrator, presenter, co-writer, and photographer for the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary “Twitch and Shout,” which won the San Francisco International Film Festival and screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lowell also wrote a memoir of the same name about his life with Tourette syndrome (Penguin, 1998). He has directed two short documentary films (Terefu and Her Children, and Bernardo and Veronica) and released an eBook, “Crazy and Proud,” that includes a video he produced.

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Lowell worked on the tenured faculty at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he was an educator from 2000 to 2020. Lowell held the position of associate professor of photography and the Greenspan Trust-Handel Foundation Endowed Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies for the 2015-2016 academic year. He also sits on the advisory board of Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health in NY, a nonprofit helping people living with developmental disabilities and autism and their families. 

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Lowell was the technical consultant and set photographer on the film Niagara, Niagara, starring Robin Tunney and Henry Thomas; the still photographer on Gary Winick’s feature The Tic Code, starring Gregory Hines; and partial inspiration for the touretting detective, played by Ed Norton in the film Motherless Brooklyn (Nov. 2019), based on Jonathan Lethem’s novel.

Handler is featured in Ric Burns' new PBS documentary film Oliver Sacks: His Own Life and in Sacks’ last posthumous book release, Everything in its Place (Knopf, April 2019), which includes a chapter called “Travels with Lowell” that chronicles their trips together throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Terefu and Her Children, a short documentary about a family of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, directed by Lowell, is being distributed by WGBH on YouTube.

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