Chasing the Line

On the 1970s skiing scene, Austrian Franz Klammer was the greatest rival of Swiss Bernhard Russi. For years, the two national heroes engaged in a duel for supremacy in downhill skiing, the greatest of all skiing disciplines. Klammer cemented his status as a skiing legend at the 1972 Olympics in Innsbruck. But how did it come about? How did he muster the mental strength to ignore the racing line in order to carve his own track down the mountainside? And what did it take for his great love Eva to be able to be at the race? Director Andreas Schmied’s feel-good movie provides a highly entertaining look behind the scenes of professional sports, and shows us Klammer as a rebel against the commercialisation of skiing. An Austrian prestige production with powerful images and a charismatic lead actor. (Zurich Film Festival)