The vibrant pre-Taliban ski community deep in the Afghan mountains

“Because I make wooden skis for my friends, they call me ​‘the boss’.”

“Poor people always pay the price of war.”

Watching a group of young Afghan boys skiing down a gentle slope in the sunshine – often crashing into the soft, deep snow along the way and collapsing into a fit of giggles – is a far cry from tuning into the coverage of the Winter Olympics currently taking place in Milano-Cortina.

In part, because these kids are not sporting the ultimate in technical clothing or the latest ski prototypes – they’re wearing woollen jumpers, jeans and wellington boots and learning on thin wooden skis they’ve fashioned themselves, with strips of plastic from water bottles nailed on to the bottom to make them glide.

But it’s also because there is nothing serious about their endeavour. It’s pure play, and the delight they’re experiencing shines from their eyes.

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Champions of the Golden Valley was the idea of Alaskan cinematographer and director Ben Sturgulewski, whose films document mountain cultures all around the world. He’d heard about a mythical ski race in Bamyan, Afghanistan – where competitors would race up and down the mountain on wooden skis because there are no ski lifts – and so in 2019 he went there for a month to make a film about it.

Not a lot of people know you can ski in Afghanistan and Baktash Ahadi, one of the film’s producers, was no different, even though he was born in Kabul before being raised in the US. ​“I knew there were mountains in Afghanistan, but I didn’t know people skied there. It was wonderful to learn new things about a country I thought I knew,” he says.

“Since 9/11, the narrative about Afghanistan has always been about war, turmoil, terrorism, and extremism – so when I heard about this film, a joyful story about the ski community, I wanted to be involved. It’s a wonderful reminder that Afghanistan is not a monolith and nor are its people.”

The film centres on Sayed Alishah Farhang, who started skiing in 2011, after an NGO distributed a small collection of skis to Bamyan. As Farhang says in the documentary, he had no idea what they were at first, but he picked up the sport quickly and narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Winter Olympics, having been taken to train as a ski racer in St Moritz.

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“When he didn’t qualify, he took that Olympic dream back home and built an amazing ski community in Bamyan as a ski coach,” says Katie Stjernholm, who produced the film along with Ahadi.

They thought they had a great sports film on their hands, celebrating local people, including women and children, whose lives had been transformed by ski culture and highlighting the intense, and also tribal, rivalry between the race’s two stars – Mujtaba from Chapdara village, and Hussain from the upper village.

“They see themselves as adversaries, but yet they’re both teenage farmers in rural Afghanistan who love to ski, so it’s a good reminder to think about what we have in common,” says Ahadi.

During Covid, the team began to cut the film. They’d almost finished when Afghanistan collapsed, and the Taliban took control in 2021. ​“The community was displaced and shattered, and we actively worked on the evacuation, primarily helping the women’s ski team to get out,” says Stjernholm.

They started contacting journalists, veterans, NGOs, government officials, volunteers – anyone that could help. ​“Being a producer felt like a very transferable skill set in this instance,” she says, adding that the team lived on Afghan time for nearly a month.

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It helped that they had Nobel Prize Winner and human rights campaigner Malala Yousafzai and Iranian-American actor Arian Moayed as executive producers, who were also working to support their families, friends and communities leave the country. ​“It became this incredible network,” says Stjernholm, and they were proud to get over 260 people out, with the help of a German NGO.

Ahadi, who prior to working in film had been a military combat interpreter with the marines in Afghanistan, adds: ​“When the Taliban took over Kabul, everyone who’d worked with Westerners thought they were going to die if they didn’t get on a plane, so everyone was calling and asking: ​‘Who do you know who can get us on a plane?’”

It was a desperate time and following that, the production team put the film on the shelf as it didn’t make sense to release ​“an endearing ski film about Afghanistan” according to Stjernholm.

Six months later, they went to Germany to reconnect with Farhang, who they’d helped relocate along with his family. But as they listened to him reflecting on his life in Bamyan, they realised they had a profound opportunity to show how the community had looked when it was intact. ​“We felt very humbled by that, and so, with Farhang’s blessing we set out to tell a different story,” says Stjernholm, in the hope they might provide some catharsis for him and the others who were displaced so abruptly.

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Farhang had told them when he shopped in the supermarket people would label him as a refugee, and nobody knew he was a skier or a ski coach, which he found tough. Refugees may be safer in western Europe, but of course no one wants to leave their home. 

“What’s hard about being a refugee – and this comes from my parents and our family being refugees, is that psychologically people have to start over,” says Ahadi. ​“Imagine being revered in your community – we’re talking about a poor farming community here – but skiers like Farhang had status. He was somebody. Then he comes to Germany and he’s physically safe, but you become invisible overnight, that’s the difficult part.”

In 2019, it wasn’t advisable to film rural women in Afghanistan, but the women who were part of the ski club, many of whom were at university in the city, happily gave their permission to be filmed.

But now with the Taliban, women can no longer ski in Afghanistan. ​“Some of the women in the film who remain in Afghanistan have their faces blurred out for their protection,” says Stjernholm. ​“But the women we show skiing are no longer in Afghanistan, I’ve had messages from them since the film was shown, saying how pleased they are that this story is out in the world.”

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Champions of the Golden Valley has won multiple awards at film festivals all around the world, but it’s been especially well received by those skiers who remain in Bamyan, who had their own special screening, and amongst the Afghan diaspora. They did a screening in Anchorage, Alaska where the filmmakers invited 100 Afghan refugees to attend, enjoy a community meal and meet their American neighbours.

“Why this film resonates with so many Afghans is that it shows the power of sport, but it also captures a people in their glory and their grief,” says Ahadi. ​“It’s an authentic and sincere representation of a life they’ve lost.” 

Stjernholm hopes those watching the film around the world, who have refugees in their community, will be more curious about their past lives and backgrounds. ​“I think we underestimate the power of film to really transport us to places and cultures that we otherwise might not be able to access,” she says. ​“In the US at the moment, the predominant narrative is one of division and difference, but this film shows a vision of a shared humanity.”

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It also reminds us that despite what the outdoor brands may have us believe, it’s not about having the latest skis or a new jacket, or even access to modern resorts with high speed ski lifts, it’s about the pleasure of being outside with your friends and having fun in the snow. ​“Skiing is such a privileged sport, because the price point to get in is so high now, but the community in Bamyan shows us you don’t actually need any of that to have all the fruits of that experience,” says Ahadi.

“Ski mountaineering is in the Olympics for the first time, which is central to our film. The timing is quite poetic as it’s also allowing countries that don’t have ski lifts like Afghanistan to take part – you just walk up, and you ski down.”

You can watch Champions of the Golden Valley for free on the Olympics Channel. To support the communities involved in the film, visit the film’s official website.

Sam Haddad is a freelance writer who writes the newsletter Climate & Board Sports.

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