The Production
One Obstacle After Another
Shot across two years, The Highest Road is an international production, from the United States to India.
The film captures the emotional roller coaster of facing a disease without a cure.With beautiful drone cinematography, the story showcases the visual challenge of taking on an incredible test of the human body – the world’s highest road.
Team Himalayas for FARA’s ride up the highest road mirrors the uphill climb of every rare disease community: one obstacle after another.
Kyle's Statement
“When you’re first diagnosed, you lose all feeling of value. You feel worthless, but when you become part of a community, you suddenly feel enormous self-worth.”
“Any feat you accomplish doesn’t have to be about “overcoming” adversity,” he says, “Instead, it’s about sidestepping adversity and weighing how you can embrace the people around you.”
“People underestimate their impact upon a treatment or a cure, but if you can find your contribution (and get involved), then you have everyone focused on a singular goal from your unique sphere of influence. In the FA community, that’s a powerful concept.”
“Do we have a cure or not? That’s the fundamental question. We all have a need for a finite answer. But maybe this binary thinking is not functional. Maybe the response is more nuanced. There are so many variables to consider, like riding a bike up a mountain. That’s one aspect of the answer.” – Kyle Bryant
Director’s Statement
In The Highest Road, we set out to tell a story that is both epic in scale and deeply intimate. At its core, this film is about the extraordinary strength found in shared purpose, how a community, bound by the urgent need for a cure, climbs together against impossible odds. Through Kyle Bryant’s journey up the world’s highest paved road, we offer a visceral metaphor for the struggle faced by those living with Friedreich’s ataxia: the isolation, the endurance, the uphill battle with time.
We were drawn to this story not only for its dramatic landscapes and physical challenges, but for its emotional terrain. We immersed ourselves in the everyday lives of patients, families, and researchers, capturing the quiet, often invisible grind of a disease that strips away mobility, independence, and life itself. These moments of raw vulnerability are the heartbeat of the film. By staying close to the people behind the science, we put viewers directly in their shoes inviting empathy, not pity; urgency, not resignation.
Visually, we leaned into contrast: the vast, otherworldly beauty of Umling La against the small, intimate spaces where people live with the realities of rare disease. This juxtaposition reflects the inner and outer journeys of the film, where personal struggle meets communal effort, and where scientific progress remains just out of reach, but never out of sight.
This is not just a story about one man’s climb. It’s about thousands of climbs happening in clinics, labs, living rooms, and hospitals around the world. We made this film to honor those battles, to shed light on a disease too few have heard of, and to inspire belief: that no climb is too steep when lives are on the line. – Allan Thompson
