Multiple screening dates across Italy. Schools packed. "Tommy and Others" sold out on February 9th in nearly every one of the twenty locations where screenings were organized. A mother wrote about the film in our last issue. We return to it now because, released last spring, the film has become the catalyst for a new approach to difference and a platform for information, reflection, and debate around autism. The young people in the film offer a clear picture of how varied the autism spectrum truly is.
The initial response has been deeply gratifying, according to Michela Paparella, who oversees the entire Rebel Brains educational platform in collaboration with Kulta and Scuola Channel.
"We're looking for a new way to communicate—one that breaks through the usual approaches to difference. With 'Rebel Brains — Connecting to Neurodiversity,' using video tutorials and infographics, we want to show how neurodiversity can become a training ground for everyday relationships, today and in the future. Our invitation is to shift perspective and refuse to surrender to a template of normalcy that we're pushed into daily. Learning to welcome an autistic person, a neuroatypical person—someone whose way of thinking is fundamentally different from what's called 'normal'—can become a kind of life training that prepares us for relationships where difference becomes an opportunity for growth, not something to fear."
For Gianluca Nicoletti, the project's principal creator, a truly inclusive model becomes the real measure of a society's civilization.
"From now on, we want every young person whose behavior doesn't fit the mold of the 'group' to be seen not simply as someone to mock and exclude, but rather as a 'rebel brain' from whom there is something to learn.
The project begins with preparation for the class and teacher, using materials from the Scuola Channel platform. This platform creates socially meaningful projects in partnership with private companies, major brands, and foundations. It produces materials available free online, without advertising—an ethical investment in social responsibility that meets schools' real needs. The portal offers brief educational clips by Luigi Mazzone, a child neuropsychiatrist, along with short films on the theme "Save a Bully," featuring two brothers, Achille and Giovanni, adopted by a family from Modena. With their own differences—one with Asperger syndrome, the other Black—they tell the story of bullying dynamics well. They explain, by reversing the usual frame, that responding with violence to something you simply don't understand and perhaps fear is foolish behavior, genuinely "loser" stuff.
After each screening, there is a dedicated space for the questions that inevitably arise. Representatives from ANGSA (National Association of Parents of Autistic Children) guide the discussion, offering personal perspective without over-medicalize the conversation. They gather the emotions, insights, disbelief, and lived experiences that emerge from the young people.
The organizers have kept all events free, thanks to partnerships with Sky Italia and the Italian Ministry of Education, and through significant organizational effort focused on second-year high school students.
Cristina Tersigni, 2018
Pride in Rebel Brains
"The modern world runs on connection: the most rewarding connections don't happen through blunt language but through the ability to attune ourselves to others, quickly and clearly. That takes practice. We don't become skilled at connecting unless we learn to recognize and understand those very different from ourselves. The neurodiverse person is an excellent personal trainer in this arena—they teach us to recognize and manage difference through the very real challenges they face in relationships.
Anyone who learns to relate calmly with neuroatypical young people will also be able to understand and be understood in moments when connecting with others feels 'difficult'.
On a social level, this approach builds the foundation for education in coexistence and respect—not as rules imposed from above, to follow in order to avoid punishment, but as a natural openness to welcoming the different. Recognizing the 'right to exist' of young people who differ from most of their peers will be important training in responsibility.
To be a 'winner' means first and foremost protecting and including precisely those young people who are 'rebel brains' by virtue of how they naturally are. Not seeing them as sick but as witnesses to creativity we need to decode, as sparks for original thought, as trainers for the complicated relationships that life ahead will surely demand. We want young people to understand that whoever genuinely includes rebel brains rather than excluding them—not as some performative display of goodness but authentically—shows far more courage than someone who acts tough because they fear going beyond their own mental boundaries. In short, those with true capacity for inclusion are the real winners."