Writers and Directors: Adam Bonke and Christian Bonke
Perfect Road, an almost perfect film, charts the attempt of a cyclist to complete the Deux Mille in a single season. The course, all on paved roads, takes in 204 peaks located in the Pyrenees and Alps. If Maximilian Schnell completes the challenge, he will be the first person to do so.
With this tension, Adam Bonke and Christian Bonke’s documentary runs like a thriller, with the number of peaks diminishing as the number of days increases. The first drama that Schnell encounters is the rain, which never stops falling. Sometimes, especially if he’s out of the saddle, pedalling uphill, he just powers through. At other times, he shelters in doorways or under trees, waiting for the rain to abate.
For most of the early peaks in the Pyrenees, he travels alone, his tent and camp stove in packs on his bike. He seems to exist on a diet of chocolate croissants, pasta, and, strangely, cucumber. He spends the night in his tent by the side of the road or huddles in a small Alpine hut, used by mountaineers. Seldom does he spend the night in a bed. Each morning, he cleans his teeth fastidiously.
It’s hard to say where Schnell is from, as he moved from country to country when he was a boy, allowing him to be fluent in French, Spanish, Italian and English. He began his cycling career in Paris after a breakup with a girlfriend. He now lives on the road and does translation jobs on his phone to make a little money. The kit and the bike are mostly free from companies eager for their gear (bike, tent) to be tested. If he has anything in storage, it’s never revealed.
He thrives on solitude, but wonders if this has made him selfish and friendless, although by the end of the course many friends join him to tackle the final peaks. Even as he enjoys their company, he still yearns for the loneliness of cycling alone, thinking about nothing but the road and the landscape.
And the landscape is breathtaking in Jonatan Rolf Mose’s cinematography. Presumably, drones capture a good deal of these shots as we watch Schnell wending his way up yet another mountainside, farm animals sometimes in the neighbouring fields, snowy peaks shining in the distance. Søren Bonke’s evocative score has its own glorious rises and falls.
At the start, Schnell talks about his other challenges, but it’s not until later in the film that he mentions that he never completed them. One, in America, was cut short by Covid, but the other one he gave up due to a lack of drive. This confession, coming in the last third of the film, provides the film with even more excitement. He’s joined by friend Florian Mestdagh, who, in this section of the route, appears to have more stamina than Schnell, and leads the way over the never-ending cols. There are more obstacles to be scaled when Schnell’s girlfriend Nina arrives, overburdened and with a heavy bike.
Perfect Road is an intimate portrait of a bike packer, and the fourth wall is never broken. But it might have been useful to have some transparency and show the camera crew and the drone operators, because we already know that Schnell is not really alone. Other questions arise too: How does he charge his phone? How does he buy food in remote regions? How does he go to the toilet? However, these queries demonstrate the film’s grip on its viewer, grasping at every detail. And you don’t have to be interested in cycling in the slightest to enjoy this film of endurance.
Perfect Road is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
