Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rising Phoenix’ on Netflix, an Uplifting Documentary About the History and Heroes of the Paralympics

Netflix offers another platform for traditionally underrepresented people via Rising Phoenix, a rah-rah documentary about the Paralympic Games; its release was timed for the start of the 2020 Paralympics, but the games were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic until 2021. Directors Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui profile some of the games’ current stars, delve into the history of the event and interview Prince Harry for some reason. Their goal is to inform and uplift, which doesn’t seem like a difficult target to hit.

RISING PHOENIX: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In voiceover, a French athlete, Jean-Baptiste Alaize, compares Paralympians to the Avengers: “We are all superheroes because we have all experienced tragedy.” We see images of Paralympians we’re about to meet in the documentary, carved in marble like Greek deities. At age 14, Bebe Vio, an Italian fencer, carried the Paralympic torch with two prosthetic hands while walking on two prosthetic legs; a bout with meningitis when she was 11 resulted in multiple amputations and significant scarring. Australian swimmer Ellie Cole had her leg amputated when she was three due to a cancerous tumor; she was called “pirate” by a classmate once, and after hurling her prosthetic at the bully, was never teased again.

Xavi Gonzalez, the former CEO of the International Paralympic Committee and the DUKE OF SUSSEX (as a subtitle identifies Prince Harry) speak of the vitality and popularity of the games. We meet Alaize, a long-jumper originally from Burundi who says he runs to escape memories from when he was three, and he watched Tutsi warlords murder his mother, and lost a leg to their machetes. We watch in amazement as American Matt Stutzman uses his feet to drive a truck, eat dinner and draw arrows back in his bow and fire them into the bullseye. British runner Jonnie Peacock defeats reigning Paralympics champ Oscar Pistorius in the 100 meter race. Cui Zhe powerlifts barbells in front of an enthusiastic crowd in her home country of China. We watch in awe as Australia’s Ryley Batt hammers other competitors in a wheelchair rugby game; South Africa’s Ntando Mahlangu darts down the track on two blades; Russian-born competitor Tatyana McFadden, adopted by an American woman, competes in the summer games as a chair racer and in the winter games as a cross-country skier.

Between these profiles, we get snippets of history. Dr. Ludwig Guttman, a Jewish German neurologist, saved dozens of Jewish victims of Kristallnacht from Gestapo concentration camps, then fled to England, where he treated war veterans. Sports were pivotal in aiding his patients both physically and mentally, so he formed tournaments that soon became the Paralympic Games — named as such, his daughter Eva Loeffler points out, because they were “parallel” to the Olympics, not because the athletes were paralyzed. The games endured significant prejudicial hardships twice: Once when Russia refused to host them in 1980, absurdly insisting the country had no disabled people (the games were hosted by the Netherlands); and again in 2016, when Rio de Janeiro officials used the Paralympics’ funding to bolster the financially ailing Olympic games, deeming the event featuring disabled athletes to be less important. They happened anyway — and despite a disrespectfully minimal amount of publicity on behalf of Rio organizers, eventually drew thousands of fans to the games.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Rising Phoenix flies on similarly spirited wings as Crip Camp and Murderball — and might pair poignantly with The Weight of Gold, the expose on the mental health of Olympic athletes that was spearheaded by Michael Phelps.

Performance Worth Watching: Bebe Vio is a lovely, lovely human being who explodes with passion and enthusiasm for competition and, at least in the subtext of her story, life itself.

Memorable Dialogue: Guttmann’s inspiring words: “Paraplegic is not the end — it is the beginning of a new life.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: We know Michael Phelps. Why don’t we know Ellie Gold? She medaled six times in Rio. Rising Phoenix has an answer — because society has shunned or hidden disabled people for generations. It also offers example after example of disable athletes who kick ass. Mightily. And have wondrous stories to share, stories that are inherently very deeply personal, and therefore inspiring to those of us who could stand to hear about the strength, courage and perseverance of the human spirit. Which, frankly, is all of us.

Although every athlete profiled here probably deserves their own doc, Ettedgui and Bonhote do reasonable justice to a decent number of them. They also cover the most significant broad points of 80-plus years of Paralympic history; I’d have loved to learn the names and feats of some past champions, but that’s a minor nitpick of a movie that exists to erase our ignorance of the Paralympics, and to fire us up about an event that any fan of sports, or human beings in general, should embrace. Rising Phoenix isn’t in the business of hard-hitting journalism, but rather, to cheerlead and emphasize the positive. That isn’t a criticism when you realize that very little about the Paralympics games has been emphasized at all, especially not at the level of a doc that’s available on a humongous international platform like Netflix.

Oh, as for Prince Harry’s participation? In 2014, he founded the Invictus Games for wounded war veterans, and he seems like a decent kid. Go be cynical somewhere else, haters!

Our Call: STREAM IT. Rising Phoenix is a stylistically solid, thoroughly watchable overview of the Paralympic Games — and it certainly isn’t short on uplifting stories.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Rising Phoenix on Netflix