What happens when the people around you don't understand you — and how do you find the people who do?
In the Season One finale of The Still Growing Up Film Club, Cece Fanning revisits the beloved 1996 film Matilda to explore belonging, justice, community and the families we find for ourselves.
Growing up in a family that neither understands nor appreciates her, Matilda learns to rely on herself from an extraordinarily young age. But through books, school, friendship and eventually Miss Honey, she begins to discover something different: there are people in the world who will value you precisely for the things that make you different.
Cece reflects on why Matilda's story can resonate so strongly through a neurodivergent lens, from feeling like everyone else was given an instruction manual for socialising to finding comfort in books, developing fierce self-reliance and possessing an intense sense of fairness. She explores the difference between being nice and being kind, why the traits we're taught to see as weaknesses can sometimes become strengths, and why having power matters far less than what we choose to do with it.
Along the way, there are libraries, chocolate cakes, terrible parents, terrifying headteachers, telekinetic powers and seven more rules for growing up.
Because sometimes family isn't simply the people we're born to. It's the people who see us, choose us, support us and allow us to be entirely ourselves.
Follow Cece:
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenotoriouscece
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thenotoriouscece
✍️ Blog: https://cecewhatimean.com/
🛍️ Store: https://stillgrowinguppodcast.dashery.com/
Produced for the Autistic Culture Podcast Network.
🎧 The Still Growing Up Film Club is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms.
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