Is There Anybody Out There? review – how to keep calm and deal with ableism | Film

With calm honesty and intelligence, Ella Glendining sets out in her revealing documentary what it is like as a woman in her 20s dealing with a condition which is sometimes called proximal femoral focal deficiency or PFFD (although this is not a term used in the film). Glendining was born without hip joints and with short femurs; she can walk or use a wheelchair, and is really almost without problems other than people’s discriminatory attitudes.

These include those who are excruciatingly well-meaning: Glendining and a friend with autism recount a revealing anecdote about Glendining using her wheelchair in the street, and someone quite far away on the pavement starting to cringe away from her, apparently making space but in a weirdly self-aggrandising way, radiating coded pass-agg hostility while saying: “Sorry … sorry … sorry … thank you … sorry …”

Glendining has a non-disabled partner and a child, and argues that the challenges she faces as a young mother and a young person in her business – film and TV – are really all about ableism. Her actual physical disabilities are not what cause the issues, although her condition is unusual – so much so that she might have considered herself entirely and imprisoningly unique before the internet – and she wants to meet other people like herself. “I want to see my reflection in a different person,” she says.

So Glendining goes on a journey to the US to meet other people in the same situation, as well as the non-disabled parents of affected children. She has a fraught encounter with Dr Dror Paley, who has a lavish Florida clinic with huge full-length photos of himself on the walls; he is a famous pioneer of limb-lengthening surgery, which he sees as a boon but Glendining sees as a painful and traumatic process in the service of ableist body imagery. It is a tense and uncomfortable moment when Dr Paley says that the people who shy away from his view need to be “educated”, although there is no explicit on-camera debate. An education is what Glendining offers.

With calm honesty and intelligence, Ella Glendining sets out in her revealing documentary what it is like as a woman in her 20s dealing with a condition which is sometimes called proximal femoral focal deficiency or PFFD (although this is not a term used in the film). Glendining was born without hip joints and with short femurs; she can walk or use a wheelchair, and is really almost without problems other than people’s discriminatory attitudes.

These include those who are excruciatingly well-meaning: Glendining and a friend with autism recount a revealing anecdote about Glendining using her wheelchair in the street, and someone quite far away on the pavement starting to cringe away from her, apparently making space but in a weirdly self-aggrandising way, radiating coded pass-agg hostility while saying: “Sorry … sorry … sorry … thank you … sorry …”

Glendining has a non-disabled partner and a child, and argues that the challenges she faces as a young mother and a young person in her business – film and TV – are really all about ableism. Her actual physical disabilities are not what cause the issues, although her condition is unusual – so much so that she might have considered herself entirely and imprisoningly unique before the internet – and she wants to meet other people like herself. “I want to see my reflection in a different person,” she says.

So Glendining goes on a journey to the US to meet other people in the same situation, as well as the non-disabled parents of affected children. She has a fraught encounter with Dr Dror Paley, who has a lavish Florida clinic with huge full-length photos of himself on the walls; he is a famous pioneer of limb-lengthening surgery, which he sees as a boon but Glendining sees as a painful and traumatic process in the service of ableist body imagery. It is a tense and uncomfortable moment when Dr Paley says that the people who shy away from his view need to be “educated”, although there is no explicit on-camera debate. An education is what Glendining offers.