By: Aaron Richardson

This is Home was produced by the skiing company Faction, and as an international collective of skiers, it has seen major growth since its inception in 2006. A big part of Faction’s success comes from the fact that the company is made up of people who live to ski. All of Faction’s equipment is made by skiers, for skiers. David Bottomley, Faction’s North American sales and operations manager, told The Peak, “To this day, we still design skis that we want to ski on. That’s what the company was born out of: a need for skis that work for us.”

The film itself shows the hometowns of six featured skiers sponsored by Faction. As one of skiers in the film — Tim McChesney — put it, the purpose of This is Home is “to show the athlete’s home locations, where they grew up skiing, and how that made them the kind of skier they are.” The environments of all of the skiers in the film are strikingly different.

In the high-altitude mountain range of the Swiss Alps, Sam Anthamatten has been skiing on these steep slopes most of his life. Antti Ollila, on the other hand, has had a wildly different experience in Finland. Without the big mountains of Switzerland, he adapted to a world of urban park skiing, setting up jumps in the best places he could find. Johnny Collinson from Utah grew up skiing down the slopes of his hometown in Alta. Often packed with trees, these slopes make for an entirely different experience than many other big mountains across the world. Each of these skiers had a home that influenced the way in which they ski.

The same can be said for the rest of the talented athletes in the film. The mountains of Switzerland and Utah, and the streets of Finland, were far from the extent of the film. Candide Thovex took some of Faction’s best skiers down the slopes of La Clusaz, France; Adam Delorme showed his home mountains of Montana; and Daniel Hanka presented the slopes of the low-altitude mountains in the Czech Republic.

There are many more incredibly talented skiers in the film, including Duncan Adams, Mathilde Gremaud, Alex Hall, Arnaud Rougier, Eirik Sæterøy, Pablo Schweizer, Henry Sildaru, and Giulia Tanno. Packed with incredible shots of these amazing skiers, This is Home is well worth the watch. No matter where you ski, or what kind of skiing you grew up with, you’ll find something familiar in This is Home.

The film was screened on October 24 at the Rio Theatre here in Vancouver. It was the film’s first showing in Canada, and it will continue touring across North America and Europe. Don’t worry if you missed it, because it will be released for free online by the end of the year.