If there ever was a time to feel the pulse of a skier, that time is now, and Crested Butte’s Matchstick Productions (MSP) located that pulse last winter while filming “After the Snowfall” for 2025’s ski film.

The stoke the skiers felt by shared energy, collective love and passion, their hearts at rest waiting for snow to fall and their energy picking up after it does, is the central theme of the movie.

“The feeling that you get after a moment of intensity, like that release at the bottom of a run, you just can’t help but start screaming because you’re stoked,” one of the skiers in the film said. “Then your buddy comes down and he’s doing the same thing, then your next buddy comes down and she’s doing the same thing. Those are the days.”

Those are the pulses MSP’s new ski film narrates-through-skiing for the company’s 34th-annual ski film, currently on tour in Colorado and world wide.

MSP’s dialed-in modern format for this year’s movie uses drone footage on steep big-mountain terrain, time-lapse clips, natural elements like water and athlete interviews mixed to transition between segments, and of course some tongue-in-cheek narration from the athletes at each skiing destination.

But what MSP also brings to skiers with this year’s ski film is one serious question needing answered.

“What has skiing brought to your life?” asks MSP co-founder Murray Wais.

Freedom. Escape. Camaraderie. Friends. Tranquil(ity).

The first segment’s action — set in Myoko, Japan and features skiers Janelle Yip, Jess Hotter and Nico Porteous — starts with shots of mountains of piled-up snow on the streets, untouched snow surrounding waterfalls and skiers preparing for a day on the mountain, setting the tone to pump up the heart rate with an epic powder-skiing segment.

“Myoko e yokoso, konayuki wo tanoshinde kudasai” or “Welcome to Myoko, please enjoy the powder,” the three’s Japanese guide Yamada said.

In typical MSP fashion, symbolic music, this time in the form of the The Cure’s “A Forest” accompanies the athlete’s segments as they float in Japan’s world-renowned snow wisping through the deep fluff while slashing turns between birch trees and jumping off pillow lines.

“Oh my God, that was so good, Japanese cold smoke,” Hotter said after finishing a deep-powder line.

If deep powder on low angle slopes in Japan wasn’t enough to wet the appetite, than steeps and deeps in Haines, Alaska surely will as the second segment opens in another part of the world that has snow for days.

Craig Murray, Tonje Kvivik, Karl Fostvedt and Parker White explain what a ski bum is to them before heading out into the Alaska wilderness to show off their ski bum skills on some of the steepest runs in North America.

“I’m not so much of like a bucket lister, more of it just depends on the day, and on any given day I just try to find my dream line,” Fostvedt said. “In some ways I might be a ski bum because I prioritize it over everything else in my life, so I guess that is just what passion is.”

As the third segment starts, you finally get a taste of MSP’s humor when skier Ben Richards asks: “How many Kiwis does it take to get a sled off a truck?” during a backcountry ski trip with snowmobiles, along side fellow skiers Craig Murray, Marcus Goguen and Finn Bilous on location at “Skull Island, British Columbia.”

Interior British Columbia has some great pillow lines, evident by MSP visiting several locations over the years to film, and the four skiers found a lot of them for this segment in the movie. It’s four men being boys in fresh powder on a snowmobiling ski-tour.

“I ski because it makes me feel free, my form of meditation, and I don’t think I’d be the same person without skiing,” Richards said.

If the heart of the movie is located in Whistler, British Columbia, than the spirit of the movie is Mark Abma, the veteran MSP skier since the premiering of 2003’s “Focused.”

“It’s so hard when you’re in the thick of it to see where you’re actually going, but once you get up there…,” Abma said while pausing with a look of amazement on his face and arms outstretched during a ski tour to some pillow-line terrain.

Abma’s personality has a way of coming out the most as he talks skier lingo to the camera.

He knows how to engage the audience into the moment.

“Bigger lines, spine lines are starting to get all filled in and looking all sexy. So that’s our goal is to start transitioning from skiing trees and pillows to getting back into the alpine.”

For this movie segment, Abma, John Rollins, Logan Pehota, Marcus Goguen and Karl Fostvedt experienced pillow lines, tree lines and eventually the high alpine in Whistler’s backcountry, even sessioning a backcountry booter.

With segments in Norway’s Lyngen Alps to an all-female adventure in Tromso, MSP further explored and showcased skiing’s camaraderie through the athletes’ story sharing to encouraging their friends on.

“No ski day is a bad ski day,” Nadine Waller said about the trip to Tromso with Michelle Parker, Coline Ballet-Baz and Caite Zeliff. “As long as I am with a good team, it is always worth it to go to the mountains.”

The movie winds down with one segment in the Tordrillo Mountains of Alaska and one at CMH Heli-ski Lodge in the Monashees in Mica Creek, British Columbia.

From very steep, fluted spines to jumping off ice outcroppings, Sam Cohen, Sam Smoothy, Ben Richards and Xander Guldman sampled the AK snow.

“Skiing to me is about exploring places that are new and exciting and interesting,” Smoothy said. “And you engage in that experience with (them) The actual act of skiing is, while still pretty joyful, is just kind of a vehicle to channel those experiences through.”

Crashes and bashes close out the movie at Palisade Tahoe in California, with an ode to spring pond skimming at the Lake Tahoe area ski resort.

MSP’s ski film “After the Snowfall” will make you happy. It will make you want to explore, find deep snow and bring your friends.

It will make you want to ski.