Girl Dessert: Girl Winter Film Tour Returns

Waverly Chin and Sierra Schlag star in *That One Friend*, the closing film on the Girl Winter Tour. Courtesy Girl Winter Film Tour

The outdoor beer garden attached to my local theater, Pierre’s Hole, has played host to plenty of parties over the years. But, on Friday, October 10, there was less beer and more glitter. Specifically, sparkling face paint, courtesy of the Girl Winter Film Tour’s glitter station.

“We got a comment last night that this feels like a ski movie premier,” says Sierra Schlag, one of the women behind the tour, as she and Sara Beam Robbins sign posters for their film, That One Friend.

This is the Girl Winter Film Tour’s second year of showcasing women-centric ski films across the United States. It’s put on by Moonrise, a creative collective made up of Schlag and Beam Robbins as well as photographer Katie Cooney and filmmaker Iz La Motte. After working together on 2023’s Advice for Girls, they wanted an avenue to showcase their smaller projects, including Nisei and Kindred, while also promoting other women working on both sides of the lens.

“Last year was put together in less than a month,” Schlag tells me as a group of teenage girls approach with glitter on their cheeks. With a longer runway and more sponsorship for the tour, the Moonrise team was able to bring major upgrades to this year’s stops, including the glitter station, a friendship bracelet-making station and a merch table.

This show in Teton Valley, Idaho, is the second of the year, following the premier in Park City, Utah. The tour has 32 stops, double the number from last year, and will show in 15 states, plus two Canadian cities. In the first two weeks of touring, Girl Winter has sold out four out of their five shows. (The outlier was at Denver’s Oriental Theater, which has a maximum capacity over 700 people.)

“People are out here making films that people want to watch about women, by women,” Iz La Motte tells me over the phone after the Denver show.

While the Moonrise team solicited films for last year’s tour, this year, they had a rigorous applicational process. Roughly 20 films were submitted and six were chosen. “The central thread is skiing and snowboarding, but this tour is so much more than that. We want all of our films to have a deeper narrative that can create a program that is more than just beautiful imagery,” says La Motte. Additionally, while the films must feature women as the subject, the filmmaker doesn’t necessarily have to be a woman, and each film has to be high quality.

Expectant-mother Janina Kuzma skis through pregnancy in *Dear Superhero*. Courtesy Girl Winter Film Tour/Tom Vialletet

The six that were selected check all those boxes and flow from one story to the next, sharing different perspectives on what it means to be a woman in skiing. Stories run the gamut from visually stunning art pieces to stories of motherhood in the mountains to healing through skiing and reconnecting with nature. While some of the films center around deep topics, like how the ski industry views pregnancy and Native people’s access to their ancestral homelands, the lineup ends with That One Friend as a light-hearted conclusion. Along with Schlag, it stars her best friend, non-professional skier Waverly Chin. “Every professional skier needs that one friend to remind them that skiing doesn’t have to be so serious and remind us of why we fell in love with skiing in the first place,” Schalg tells me between signing posters.

“We have an incredible lineup. We were very intentional with how we chose that lineup. We felt that diversity in story was really important,” Beam Robbins adds. “We didn’t want everyone to come watch six super similar films. We wanted each one to stand on its own and have people get their unique experience from each.”

Unsurprisingly, the attendees are mostly women, but, according the Schlag, it’s a huge spread of age, from little girls to women in their 70s. Most of the men attending are brought by the women in their lives. “Our message for them is that this really is for everyone. We spent decades watching the men on screen, not really thinking anything of it, and we’re just flipping the script,” says La Motte. “Why not have a bunch of men in the audience watching women on screen?”

As for what’s next, Schlag, Beam Robbins, La Motte and Cooney will be touring through November with Girl Winter, and have a new ski film on the horizon, Winter Elements. The premise is showcasing women in ski industry jobs like ski patrol, avalanche forecasters and snow cat drivers.

“We’re no longer asking for a seat at the table. We’re already there,” says La Motte. “We’re moving past that to show that women are in the ski industry. They’ve been here for a very long time, and they’re not going anywhere. This film moves beyond the professional athlete focus. We’re including roles in the ski industry that aren’t typical shown in ski media.”

Winter Elements won’t premier until Fall 2026, but you can see a teaser of it at Girl Winter stops, and Moonrise has set up a Kickstarter to continue funding the film’s production.

Currently, Beam Robbins, Schlag, La Motte and Cooney are focused on the Girl Winter Tour and all the glitter and positivity that comes with it. As for why you should attend the tour, perhaps Cooney said it best when a young audience member asked her why she skis during the Teton Valley show’s Q&A: “Because it’s fun.”