Financial analyst Max Stainton has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user – “Give me a maths problem, I’ll be fine. Don’t ask me to put on my shirt,” he quips – and director Carl Woods, in his debut documentary, follows Stainton on a two-week charity trek to Everest base camp on horseback. Horse riding is incredibly demanding physically for Stainton, and this film is not only a fly-on-the-wall adventure doc, but an insight into the frustrations of being disabled and constantly dealing with other people’s stereotypes and assumptions.
It begins at home in London where Stainton lives with his partner, Candy. Giggling, they describe meeting when she was hired as his PA, and they fancied each other like mad. (“Inappropriate!”) Stainton explains that, with the trek, what he wants is to challenge society’s perceptions, the pigeonholing of him as that guy in a wheelchair. “TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN” says a sticker on the fridge. So, he does endless crunches with his physiotherapist, and walks up and down the stairs in his block of flats.
