Nominated for two Emmys, Markus Eder’s The Ultimate Run presents 10 minutes of jaw-dropping action. Where is this weird place, with the seracs like hobbit houses and that hole in the mountain that looks like the entrance to Wonderland?
Much of it was shot in freeskier Markus Eder’s home resort of Klausberg, in northern Italy. The big-mountain footage, including the unforgettable ice cave sequence, takes place in the Swiss Alps near Zermatt. The film came out last year but has only just received its well-deserved Emmy nominations.
What seems like one long run of jumps, flips, twists, rail skiing, and near-vertical hijinks actually took three months stretched over three COVID-interrupted years.
With all the footage in the can, the editors stepped in to snip it together into one seamless, perfect, action-packed run. For this, thank Red Bull, the deep-pocketed producer of this mini-classic. It shows how the best adventure imagery is both genuine and a fictional construct.
Freeskier Markus Eder had this idea of an ultimate run in mind since 2015. Although it looks like tons of fun, it involved many retakes, hard falls, and a diligent crew grooming snow ramps in unlikely places, including the back of a flatbed truck and an Italian castle.
In the behind-the-scenes footage, which you should watch to understand how much went into this short film, Eder declares after the last day of filming ends, “I feel human again.”
At some ultimate levels, fun is hard work.
