Film Highlights Voice Tech's Role in Parkinson's Care

Come Talk to ME, a feature-length documentary by independent filmmaker and director Deacon Warner and producer Jackie Hunt Christensen, will make its big-screen debut at the 2026 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival in April. The film highlights the role of communications, including voice technologies, in helping Parkinson's patients communicate with families, friends, communities, and healthcare providers as the disease progresses.

Come Talk To ME follows Parkinson's disease activist Jackie Hunt Christensen, her husband Paul, and a group of friends with Parkinson's as they reflect on the many types of communication that are necessary to allow them to participate fully in relationships.

"It's such an honor to be able to launch our film out into the world from MSPIFF," Warner said in a statement. "To be part of its rich history of the past 45 years while also utilizing cutting-edge AI technology to set us apart from other films is incredible."

The AI technology to which Warner referred is Eleven Labs' text-to-speech program, which uses a voice cloned from Jackie Hunt Christensen's own voice as it was recorded at a taped cable-access television interview she did in May 2000. She had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in July 1998, at age 34. Dubbed "JHC2K" by Hunt Christensen, this generative AI provides narration for nearly all of the documentary.

"Having Parkinson's does not mean that you stop loving, caring, and feeling. Our film shows that through my story, and the stories of my husband, our two sons, and several of my friends with Parkinson's and their care partners," Hunt Christensen emphasized in a statement. "We believe that it's important to keep talking, whether we use our voices, an assistive device that can talk for us, hand signals and gestures, or certain looks or twinkles in our eyes; until those of us with Parkinson's choose to stop talking, because communication is everything!"