New Film Details College Life for Students with Autism!

In ‘Autism Goes to College,’ Manhattan Beach filmmaker Erik Linthorst documents the lives of five college students on the autism spectrum and how they negotiate college life.

Set to premiere during Autism Awareness Month, Autism Goes to College follows five students on the autism spectrum as they negotiate the complicated on and off–campus experience. Proceeds from the film have been earmarked to help create an online autism resource center for college students with autism.

“They (educators) don’t have any training, don’t really know how to handle balancing the needs of a special needs student with the needs of their neurotypical students,” Linthorst said. “We hope it’s a resource… and is a conversation starter to help schools, universities around the country start to grapple with this phenomenon.”

One of the critical financiers behind the film project was the Graduate School of Education at UC Riverside with the help of Associate Dean Jan Blacher. Blacher has been using Lindhorst’s other film Autistic-Like: Graham’s Story in her classroom for years. The film premiered on PBS in 2011 and reached over 85 million people.

The five students that star in the documentary all attend local colleges and provide the documentary with unique perspectives about attending college while also being on the autism spectrum, living on and off–campus, and coming from different ethnic backgrounds.

The documentary highlights some of the different challenges that students face when attending college, such as roommate situations, handling money on and off–campus, class schedules, balancing leisure time with class time, homesickness and much more.

“There’s a really good mix of characters to follow,” Linthorst said. The documentary premieres at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica Wednesday, April 17, for Autism Awareness Month. The theatre’s located at 1328 Montana Ave. in Santa Monica.

For more information, visit autismgoestocollege.org, or email [email protected].