Alaska-raised filmmaker brings emotional tale of Afghan ski club to Anchorage International Film Festival

After years of shooting and editing, Ben Sturgulewski was excited to finally share the final product.

Sturgulewski, a Service High graduate, had nearly completed a short film about a plucky ski club in the Bamyan Province of Afghanistan.

Then everything in that world changed.

The United States military withdrawal from Afghanistan in late summer 2021 left millions of Afghans mired in uncertainty as the Taliban regained rule in much of the country. That included many of the people featured in Sturgulewski’s film and even more Afghans the film’s production team had befriended during their time filming in the country.

The story he had told seemed incomplete and not emblematic of the present realities, so Sturgulewski continued to work until he completed “Champions of the Golden Valley.”

“It was a film about hope for the future, and how people were coming together and there was possibility in Afghanistan,” Sturgulewski said. “And at the time when everything fell apart, it just felt like there wasn’t (hope) anymore. It felt like that had been erased.”

A bulk of the full-length documentary film features the Bamyan Ski Club and coach Alishah Farhang as they prep for a big local ski race — the Afghan Ski Challenge. But it also follows Farhang to Germany, where he fled as a refugee in late 2021.

“Champions of the Golden Valley” is one of the featured films at the Anchorage International Film Festival, which kicks off this week. The documentary shows at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub. Farhang will join the filmmakers in Anchorage and participate in a Q&A following the showing. Filmmakers are also working with the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services through Catholic Social Services so that Farhang can meet with Afghan refugees who have resettled in Anchorage.

Sturgulewski also spent time in both Kodiak and Seward growing up, and after graduating from Service, he attended Colorado College. That’s where he first got into filmmaking, making adventure films for outdoor companies like Patagonia and Yeti.

He started working independently in 2014, and in 2019 he went to Afghanistan to produce a film on the Afghan Ski Challenge. The story was already different from the adventure-style films Sturgulewski had been working on.

“It was a much deeper story,” he said. “Skiing was kind of the core binding element of it, but really it was about this community finding ways to come together.”

Although they’re light on high-tech gear, the club members are high on ingenuity, developing a rope tow powered by a motorcycle and forging skis made of wood and plastic strips from jugs.

The race is headlined by Mujtaba, a shepherd and two-time champion, and his rival Hussain Ali. The first day of the Afghan Ski Challenge features kids’ and women’s races. The main race is a duel between the two rivals, whose relationship has evolved to a friendship.

“My experience in Afghanistan was so warm,” Sturgulewski said. “The people are so beautiful and accommodating and just welcoming and so kind, and we really wanted to show the counter-story to everything that you see in the news about Afghanistan, which is violence and war and all these things. Because that’s not the lives of so many people. There are so many people who are living these really, really remarkable lives.”

When the country was thrown into chaos, Sturgulewski knew the cut of his film would not stand. But he also didn’t want to stand by while the people he’d befriended in the country would suffer at the hands of the Taliban.

He and his partner Katie Stjernholm, who is a producer on the film, went into action, trying to help people escape the country. After three weeks often working nearly around the clock to make contacts, procure visas and coordinate flights, they helped nearly 200 Afghanis relocate to other countries, mostly in Germany. That included a number of women who were involved in the ski program, one of few athletic outlets for women in the country.

Alishah Farhang had gotten out of the country earlier and was himself in Germany. Soon afterward, the filmmakers traveled to meet with him to try to make sense of the situation. They interviewed Farhang over the course of two weeks as he adjusted to a new life while craving a return to Bamyan.

He recounts a newfound situation living in Germany with his wife and two children, and adds layers of depth and drama to the film as he relives the struggle and confusion at the Kabul Airport.

Although it wasn’t the film that Sturgulewski initially conceived, “Champions of the Golden Valley” has been very well received. It debuted at the Tribeca Festival in New York and has earned awards at a number of festivals this year.

“Ultimately, with a documentary you basically, like, hold on tight, and you witness something unfold,” Stjernholm said. “The story, in a way, tells itself, and you’re the one who’s privileged to witness it. That’s how it was. The story we wanted to tell was one thing, but the story that happened and the way it evolved, we’re just kind of showing up to it. It took us on a wild ride. But I would say that the story we have now is more rich, more fun, more meaningful to audiences.”

Although Sturgulewski worked on much of the editing on the film while living in Girdwood, he has relocated to Colorado and is excited to be able to show the film in Anchorage.

“It’s just a really wonderful homecoming,” he said. “I’ve shown ski films at the Bear Tooth over the years, and they were all more just your standard ski films. This has so much more. This just has so much more depth.”