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TROMSØ 2025

Recensione: Ski - The Greatest Ski Tour of All Time

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- Lo sciatore e regista norvegese Nikolai Schirmer cerca di realizzare il nuovo grande documentario sportivo, mettendo insieme una serie impressionante di componenti con risultati un po' contrastanti

Recensione: Ski - The Greatest Ski Tour of All Time

Questo articolo è disponibile in inglese.

Tromsø-based professional skier and filmmaker Nikolai Schirmer wanted to make the ski world’s Free Solo, the US climbing documentary that won the hearts of audiences worldwide, not to mention several coveted awards. Schirmer has made a name for himself as a popular YouTuber and talented athlete creating ski shorts that have garnered millions of cumulative views. The multi-hyphenate’s next big pursuit became Ski - The Greatest Ski Tour of All Time, his first feature, which he states in the movie was largely funded by his athletic sponsor, the high-end French ski brand Black Crows. The documentary screened most recently at the 2025 Tromsø International Film Festival and will have its Norwegian theatrical release starting on 31 January after limited screenings at Europe’s and North America’s best ski spots.

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Ski is a fascinating beast with a series of interesting parts composed of Schirmer’s own background as a self-styled filmmaker and professional freeskier making a living from the combination. His style speaks well to a growing trend in content creators turning towards longform content, ranging from the Daniels (Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once) to Joseph Kahn (known for directing several Taylor Swift music videos). It’s thus hard to ignore what he’s doing, even if it feels unconventional in the context of the rigid features of the industry.

Schirmer’s film begins with the hook of “re-finding” his childhood best friend, Vegard Rye, who now dedicates his life to extreme athleticism, mountaineering and a plan to conquer 27 treacherous Norwegian peaks in one swift go, which Schirmer dubs “The Greatest Ski Tour of All Time”. This in and of itself is a wild and wonderful premise, but the issue in part is that Vegard doesn’t seem to want to be filmed. Nonetheless, he’s a fundamentally fascinating character: charming and nonchalant, his physical stamina is matched only by that of his mind, as he sticks to an immensely strict training routine that puts his entire being on the brink.

Ski eventually derails into a self-referential piece that plays more as a YouTube feature – Schirmer also narrates the film and seems to admit that Black Crows’ funding technically only can go towards a movie about himself – that speaks plenty to this career but also his desire to move beyond the web-based form. It’s true that Schirmer has clearly developed into an accomplished action director and cinematographer, accompanied by others including his longtime DoP Joonas Mattila, crafting spellbinding snowy sequences and shots that put viewers right there with the athletes.

Schirmer seems to have all of the parts needed for the next great athletics movie, but they are weighed down by what the film needs to be in order to fulfil sponsorship requirements, captivate a chronically online audience and serve as a source of self-promotion. There are glimpses of what could have been drawn out, skimming across a series of deeply poignant topics such as a period of his life where he was suicidal and brief, breath-stealing moments of mountain peril. At several points, we witness avalanches firsthand and powerful scenes of athletes plummeting down mountains to their near-deaths, captured by helmet-mounted cameras. However, Schirmer never dives deeper into more emotional territory and instead trades its potential for cornier jokes.

Ski continues to bear the odd artefacts of YouTube that work brilliantly on the platform while falling flat at length on the big screen: lightning-fast editing, over-narration, a dramatic use of titles and occasionally overly on-the-nose comedic notes. But at its most successful, the pacing of Ski passionately captures the frenetic energy of freeride skiing, while the archival footage and photos of Schirmer and Vegard as they first strove to become professional athletes cultivate a genuinely fresh atmosphere of motivation.

Ski is a Norwegian production by It’s Gonna Happen, Rein Film and Arctic Film Norway. Norsk Filmdistribusjon is managing its Norwegian distribution along with its limited theatrical releases worldwide.

(Tradotto dall'inglese)

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