\n\tAfter its Zurich Film Festival world premiere, Perfect Road has been screening at the 70th edition<\/a> of the BFI London Film Festival<\/a>. THR talked about the film with the Bonkes in London and checked in with Schnell via Zoom in Bolzano.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI had planned the challenge for seven or eight months, maybe a year,\u201d Schnell tells THR. \u201cFrom what I\u2019ve understood about the film industry, it\u2019s a very long-term process because writing the script, financing the movie, and things like that take a long time, and usually you do that before [shooting] the film.\u201d So when he agreed to the project, he made very clear that the film team had to make things work on his schedule. \u201cI would not postpone the challenge by two years,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cAnd I was super clear about that from the first day.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Perfect Road,\u2019 courtesy of Elk Film<\/p>\n \n\tThe film team had to come up with a strategy to capture as much as possible without interfering with Schnell\u2019s challenge. \u201cI always said the same thing,\u201d the cyclist recalls. \u201c\u2018I\u2019m in my challenge, and I live my life. If you want to do a documentary, it really has to be a documentary. There\u2019s no way I will act anything. There\u2019s no way I will repeat any scene.\u2019 I said, \u2018You deal with whatever you can get, but I don\u2019t adapt to you. I don\u2019t want the filmmaking to take a single piece of energy out of me.\u2019 So basically, we\u2019re two distinct entities. They were trying to film something, and I tried to achieve something, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe filmmakers mulled various plans for how to best capture footage. In the process, they embarked on an adventure that involved living three months in a campervan and not only filming technology and nature but also all sorts of other winding roads. \u201cWe thought initially that we would have several DPs over the course of three months,\u201d Christian Bonke tells THR. \u201cBut then our DP was kicked out by his girlfriend, and he had nowhere to stay. So he said, \u2018I\u2019m going to do all three months. This is perfect for me.\u2019 And Adam and I took turns.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYou don\u2019t have to worry about the cinematographer, though. \u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019ll come back a different man,’\u201d Adam Bonke shares. \u201cAnd he did. He came back, and he got back with his girlfriend, and now they have twins.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhat helped the Bonkes with the planning of the expedition was the man they followed. \u201cMax is very organized. And he is a nerd when it comes to planning and mapping,\u201d Adam Bonke tells THR. \u201cSo we did knew pretty much every day where he would be, which peaks he would climb, and we could look 12 days ahead and say, \u2018Okay, he\u2019s going to be in Austria on this peak then, and in 16 days he\u2019s going to be there.\u2019 There were some delays, of course, when the weather hit, but he actually stuck to the plan amazingly.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSchnell was adamant that the film crew couldn\u2019t provide any help to him. \u201cAt some points, we were thinking that maybe the crew could take a set of tires, so that if my tires wear out, I would have them in their car,\u201d he shares. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t want them to take energy from me, and I also didn\u2019t want any advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tChristian Bonke highlights how Schnell stuck to his independence and indeed took on the mountain challenge without help throughout the journey. \u201cMany nights, we wanted to invite him inside the campervan and offer him some food,\u201d he says. \u201cBut he really refrained from that. He was in the van once for a very short period.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Perfect Road,\u2019 courtesy of Elk Film<\/p>\n \n\tAdds Adam: \u201cYeah, we just wanted to show him what we were doing, what we were filming. And he came in for two minutes and then left again.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWith Schnell valuing his freedom and nature so much, the filmmaker duo also noticed that at times, he needed more space. \u201cInitially, he was thrilled that we would make the film, but he was so concentrated on the difficult physical task,\u201d says Christian. \u201cSo very soon he also became a little tired of the camera being there. One of his core values is solitude, but he had three of us going around with him all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAdds Adam: \u201cI think the worst thing for him probably was this fact that there was a car behind him, because he really loves nature, silence, solitude and just being in that moment. And then there we were in a diesel van behind him a lot of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tConcludes Christian: \u201cSo, we were focusing on not being too intrusive. I think we let him be in the zone, and I think you can almost feel that sometimes he got so used to us being around that he didn\u2019t even notice us.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat said, the filmmaker duo had to be ready to capture any unusual encounters or special moments. \u201cWe quickly learned, and we had predicted this, that, of course, filming a guy going up and down mountains every day is going to get repetitive,\u201d recalls Adam. \u201cIt\u2019s going to get boring. So we really needed to be there when he did something else, when he met someone, when he was with friends, when he had conversations with other human beings. We wanted to give him space when we could, but we also really needed to be there when something social happened.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDoes the film team feel the camera did have an impact on Schnell? \u201cIt\u2019s interesting what a camera does to you in a way. I think you start to reflect somehow,\u201d offers Christian Bonke. \u201cThere\u2019s almost a metaphysical element to him sensing our gaze. Early on, he said to us that maybe he was contemplating whether he could continue his whole life like this. So that was something lingering in the back of his mind. He ended up living like that for almost 10 years, sleeping in a tent every night.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIndeed, things have changed a bit since the film shoot three years ago. Asked if he was planning any new big mountain challenges, Schnell tells THR: \u201cThere has not been one single idea in those three years since the challenge that really sounded sexy enough to just go for. I mean, I\u2019m in a challenge because I now have a base camp here in Bolzano. It\u2019s quite a challenge to settle somewhere. I create backpacking events, so it\u2019s a different challenge. It\u2019s not a dramatic, sporty challenge, but for me, it\u2019s challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCould people see Schnell in another movie or series? \u201cYou never say never, but not a documentary \u2013 that\u2019s for sure,\u201d he shares.<\/p>\n \n\tThe cyclist leaves it up to viewers of Perfect Road what they want to or actually do take away from the film experience. <\/p>\n \n\tThe filmmaker duo has taken something with them from those months in the campervan. \u201cWe often talk about how we miss those days,\u201d Christian Bonke tells THR. \u201cIt was so beautiful, and you felt embraced by nature. After meeting Max, we were completely struck by how conventional our lives at home were and how many constraints they had. So we could get a little glimpse of living differently.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Adam Bonke shares with THR: \u201cHe says he\u2019s trading comfort for freedom. That\u2019s such a nice thing to say. And it really frames things perfectly. We were interested in learning what that price of freedom potentially is. I think we can all somehow relate to what he\u2019s done. We all fantasize from time to time about leaving, about changing things, doing something radical with our lives. But very few of us do anything. Whether you\u2019re interested in cycling or not, this is a guy who actually did something radical with his life.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYou have to watch Perfect Road to see how you feel about pushing the boundaries of freedom to their limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Years ago, Maximilian Schnell left his job and his life in Paris and began a nomadic lifestyle on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[124945,367255,88,2091,206],"class_list":["post-885450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bfi-london-film-festival","tag-bfi-london-film-festival-2026","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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