Blind teens reaching for the sky

There are enough good stories for three movies in Lucy Walker's

Blindsight

, an exhilarating trip with six blind Tibetan teenagers as they scale one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas.

Stigmatized and insulted within their Buddhist culture - blindness being seen as punishment for sins of past lives - the six make an ascent that's as much spiritual as geographical.

With them are the American mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer, the first sightless person to scale Mount Everest; and Sabriye Tenberken, a blind German social worker who founded Braille Without Borders, after traveling alone across China to do so. Walker - who not only made the film but had to make the trip to do it - captures all the internal conflicts of the team: the gung-ho American shoot-for-the-top attitude vs. Tenberken's belief that the climb itself is what's important.

Some of the tone is uneven; When Weihenmayer is narrating, for instance, he sounds like an NBC Olympics broadcaster, with all the strangled spontaneity that implies. But the kids, in their courage and their conflicts - about their own worth and the Westernized attitudes they're exposed to - are inspiring.

Walker, whose previous film, The Devil's Playground, examined Amish teens immersed in the modern world, has a delicate sense of observation that never seems confused, even in the thin air of the Himalayas.

Directed by Lucy Walker. With Erik Weihenmayer and Sabriye Tenberken.

Running time: 1 hour, 44 mins.

Parent's guide: PG (thematic elements, mild profanity)

Showing at: Ritz at the BourseEndText