"We need all the heroes we can get," says Christopher Reeve near the start of Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s documentary, a film about a man who truly redefined heroism. Reeve, a handsome New York-born theatre actor, became a global superstar when he took the lead as the Man of Steel and his alter ego Clark Kent in Richard Donner’s Superman in 1978. But it was his accident in 1995, when a fall from a horse left him paralysed from the neck down, that turned Reeve from a popular actor into a beacon of hope for millions.
Bonhôte and Ettedgui have tackled iconhood (2018’s McQueen) and disability (2020’s Rising Phoenix) in their films before; Super/Man fuses both subjects. It was made with the cooperation of Reeve’s family: his now-grown-up children Matthew, Alexandra and Will all contribute, offering some heart-on-sleeve recollections about their father. The fact that Will celebrated his third birthday in the ICU just after Reeve’s accident is just one poignant detail among many.
