Peter Ettedgui's documentaries with Ian Bonhôte give their subjects close attention and considerable polish. We value the care, though Rising Phoenix suggests they sometimes work too hard to make sure admiration is our response.
Fi1m perspective
In Rising Phoenix (2020), the competition footage gives us plenty to admire before the music adds its encouragement. Peter Ettedgui and co-director Ian Bonhôte want us to look closely at what the Paralympic athletes can do, and make that a pleasure. We were moved by the athletes and their skill, then frustrated when the insistent score kept pressing the point. The film is worth an evening, but its most persuasive material needs less help than the directors seem willing to allow.
Ettedgui's earlier screenplay work includes Onegin (1999); he co-wrote Listen to Me Marlon (2015), built from Marlon Brando's personal audio archive. The directing partnership with Bonhôte began with McQueen (2018), drawing on footage of Alexander McQueen's shows and interviews with family and colleagues. The pair approach those shows as storytelling, not simply as fashion. That interest in what a subject makes or does is also what we value in Rising Phoenix.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024) continues their use of personal archives, combining home-video material with new interviews. Across their documentaries, Ettedgui and Bonhôte favour thematic structures and shifts in time, with editor Otto Burnham among their collaborators. Music is central to the way they bind this material together; composer Ilan Eshkeri is another collaborator. There is a practical purpose to that emphasis, since these films must bring disparate sources into a coherent story. Our question is how much emotional guidance the audience needs.
In Rising Phoenix, the crowded storytelling leaves too little room for the differences between its many lives. The directors' readiness to find an encouraging story in each risks making the athletes seem more alike than they are. We would welcome more time with those differences, even if it made the film less tidy. The athletes and competition footage remain compelling enough to carry it through the over-insistent presentation. Start with Rising Phoenix, with a little patience for the score.
Biography
Peter Ettedgui is a British writer and director of documentary films. He began his career working in the art department and as an assistant editor.
Ettedgui has collaborated frequently with director Ian Bonhôte. Their credits include the feature documentaries McQueen (2018), about fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and Rising Phoenix (2020), about the Paralympic movement. He also co-directed Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024).
