Antti Ollila isn’t short on style, which isn’t all that surprising when you take into account he has the means to spend 300 days a year in ski boots. Top that off with plenty of familiarity with, and affinity toward, skateboarding and the guy is working with a loaded bag of tricks. He’s no one-trick pony.
All this makes the Finnish skier a good athlete to put the spotlight on when you want to highlight the progression of freeskiing. Better yet, Roots is a film showcasing freeskiing’s progression by exploring the discipline’s…roots. Duh. For Antti, that meant putting his skiing up against a handful of different backdrops, from neon backlit night ski sessions to sunrise powder runs looking for any and every natural feature he can find.
The larger flick is an eight-chapter, feature-length film highlighting the elements that came together to create freeskiing as we know it. The film was shot on location in the Wyoming and Montana backcountry, Mt. Baker, the Italian Dolomites, Finland, Verbier, and Switzerland, with over two dozen of today’s best exploring different destinations.
