About PNM
Logline
People with disabilities lead efforts to change how disability is portrayed in the media. While their voices have struggled to reach mainstream audiences, their perseverance breaks barriers and their authentic contributions improve media and benefit society as a whole.
Summary
Props No More is an intersectional documentary film examining the media industry through the perspectives of disabled media creators, activists, and experts worldwide. Across news and entertainment, people with disabilities are often portrayed using stereotypes, which limits their opportunities and underrepresents their talent. Props No More shows how disabled journalists, actors, filmmakers, and other media professionals are defying these portrayals with their authentic narratives. The film spotlights the broad benefits of accurate disability representation, making media more colorful, diverse, and inclusive for everyone.
Storyline
Props No More is an educational feature documentary that examines how the media underrepresents people with disabilities both on- and off-screen. The film opens with harmful examples of “crap rep”—bad disability representation that remains common. People with disabilities are frequently portrayed as supercrips, inspirational for ordinary actions, or pitiful simply because of their disability. These far-reaching stereotypes deeply harm people with disabilities. Through news clips, fictional scenes, archival material, and reactions from disabled media makers, the film reveals a pattern: when people with disabilities are included, they are rarely shown as complex, ordinary, or in control of their stories. This first part explores how such representations affect disabled individuals by following the early careers of disabled actors, journalists, filmmakers, designers, and consultants.
Props No More demonstrates that stereotypes in the media cause real harm. Repeated portrayals of disability in a negative or one-dimensional way teach non-disabled people to misunderstand disability. This misinformation fuels ableism—discrimination against people with disabilities. Media influence how employers judge, how schools act, how doctors listen, how journalists report, how viewers respond, and even how disabled people view themselves.
The film follows eight media makers who each confronted these consequences in different ways. They all reached the same outcome: discrimination. Two actors describe the barriers and assumptions they met in the entertainment industry. They share why they created their own opportunities. Disabled journalists explain what happens when disability is covered by mainstream newsrooms without disabled people involved. They also discuss how discrimination worsens when multiple intersections are in play. A designer and creator shows how humor exposes ableism and shifts the frame. A filmmaker argues for including accessibility from the start in any project. A consultant explains why authentic representation matters, especially for people who communicate in different ways. Together, they show what it means to be considered “props”: to exist only as storytelling tools, with no agency or creative power over the process. The second part focuses on our contributors’ turning point and asks: how do we change the narrative?
For many contributors, being misrepresented, underestimated, or excluded led them to create differently. Now, they control their own representation. In journalism, acting, film, comedy, design, consulting, scholarship, activism, and accessibility, disabled creators are building their own media spaces. They are also transforming existing ones. They are writing scripts, producing films, advising productions, training newsrooms, creating festivals, building toolkits, and producing accessible work. This shows that lived experience is not a limitation but a form of expertise, creativity, and advancement. The film shows the shift from being badly represented to representing oneself. Disabled people will not wait to be included. They are building platforms and opportunities. They are challenging ableist narratives on both sides of the camera!
From there, Props No More highlights best-practice examples. The film looks at disability-led initiatives, projects, and organizations that show how media can improve. It covers nonprofits that help disabled people tell their own stories and film challenges that create opportunities for disabled filmmakers. It also shows festivals that make access central, advocacy projects that bring disability into mainstream debate, and media tools that help creators move past stereotypes.
The film does not claim that better media representation alone will solve ableism. It asserts, however, that the media is a primary place where ableism is taught and repeated—and thus a key front on which change must occur.
In the end, Props No More is concerned with resilience, creativity, and power—the power to frame a story and decide who tells it or is seen as credible. It is about the power to stop the media from using disabled people as props.
The film ends by putting the question back to the audience. Who has been missing from the room? What would media look like if disabled people were not exclusively included, but leading the conversation?
Audience
The primary audience is disabled people, disabled creators, journalists, actors, filmmakers, artists, writers, and media professionals interested in representation, culture, and disability justice.
Secondary audiences include non-disabled allies, film and media professionals, journalists, editors, educators, students, film festival audiences, disability organizations, funders, cultural institutions, and general audiences who may not actively seek out disability-related content but are interested in human interest stories.
And that’s why you should watch it:
Current Production Status
The project began in May 2024. Filming has included shoots in the Netherlands, Berlin, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. The script was locked in December 2025, and the final stage of production and post-production is taking place in 2026.