Free on Vimeo, YouTube and Tubi!

Woodcarver Steiner looks like Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg had a child.

Herzog, in sort of a sports reporter fashion, speaks directly to the camera while holding a microphone and relating his belief that Walter Steiner is the World’s Best Ski-Flier. We see Herzog fanboy a little bit. As dramatically as a sports reporter, he stands at the point exactly where this film had it’s inception, where Steiner landed a nearly record-breaking ski jump at 176m. Nearly, because the judges invalidated Steiner’s score on the technicality that he landed “out of bounds” but actually beyond the bounds.

We meet Steiner in his woodshop, then follow him to practice, where he jumps from deep squat to balletic leap (the power! the grace!).

Steiner is a man at the top of his craft, and he shares the anxiety of being great – where your audience want to see you fail or expect something more spectacular than yesterday. We see several jumps, and it’s an exhilarating compilation. One can see from the jump of the jump (haha) exactly how Steiner’s utterly precise form is superior to competitors. Steiner loves to fly, and he is his own biggest competitor. There are some lessons, musing about fear, about not overthinking… but beyond deep lessons this is just actually fun to watch.

Huge bonus is the chill-dude music by Popol Vuh.