Higher Than Everest

Major Hari Pal Singh Ahluwalia was part of the first Indian expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1965. A few years later, during the 1971 war with Pakistan, he was shot and left paraplegic. The film follows what he did next: he founded the Indian Spinal Injury Centre in New Delhi, one of the country's most important rehabilitation facilities for people with spinal cord injuries. The trajectory of his life is almost implausible, and the film treats it with the directness it deserves.

Higher Than Everest is a film about the relationship between physical achievement and moral purpose. Ahluwalia reached the literal top of the world and then, from a wheelchair, built an institution that has changed thousands of lives. The film is not interested in sentiment. It's interested in what a person does with the life they have, however different that life turns out to be from the one they planned. Ahluwalia's answer, it turns out, was to keep serving.