Candide Thovex is a french ski legend and most accomplished skier in the world. The film “Few Words” is directed by Matt Pain and produced by Quicksilver and Candide Thovex. This documentary takes us on the journey through Candide’s life to show what he has been through to get to being one of the best free riders the world has seen. Candide shows us how he has overcome many obstacles, how he changed his own life in many ways and how he changed peoples lives.  

The film “Few Words” changed the way I looked at Candide, you never truly know someone until you hear a step by step explanation of their life and what they’ve gone through. Before I saw this film, I thought of Candide as just another big mountain skier, which is cool and all, but now I have heard his story, he is much more than that. He is a legend, he will forever go down in ski history.  Candide has accomplished so much and yet he is only now in his 40s. He started off doing freestyle and moguls skiing, he was doing backflips and getting higher airs than any other. He was one of the first people to ski the way he did, it was so unique to be doing what he was doing and the way he was doing it. As they say in the movie, Candide took a lot of his style from the snowboarders as they had started doing tricks and Candide wanted to do them also. He would go skiing with the snowboarders and develop their tricks in a way so that it was possible for him to do on skis. “He was the first skier to make all his moves really cool”, one former snowboard freeride world champ said about Candide. He carried on this way for a while impressing everyone with how big he would go and what he could do in the air. He went into doing a lot of competing in super park and as he did that he continued to “blow people’s minds”. Candide’s ski career is continually changing. He’s gone from being a moguls skier throwing backflips here and there to now being one of the worlds greatest big mountain adventure skiers of all time. I relate to the story of Candide because of my brother. My brother is a very good skier just like Candide, anything he tries he seems to become very good very quickly. Though Candide is a world champ and my brother isn’t, I still compare them to each other in the sense that they are both great skiers and have had lots of changes within their skiing careers, my brother started as a ski racer, has done skiX, freestyle and big mountain and I hope that he will become a world champ in one of them. Both Candide and my brother inspire me because of their talents.

Candide has overcome some pretty crazy stuff in his lifetime, one being when he broke his back. He was at an invitational event and there was a big jump called the “Big Bertha” all his friends were too scared to do it, but Candide wanted to do it. After a few speed checks he went for it. Unfortunately he landed just short of the landing, knuckling the jump so badly he broke his back as he went tumbling down the hill. His friends watching claim they thought he was dead it was such a strong impact. Because Candide is so strong he came back from that after several months of rehab, joined the free ride tour after being told he may never ski again. On his first free ride tour ever he gained a place on the podium and after that he has been getting first place constantly. Candide has so much passion for the sport he does, he is able to overcome anything that may stop him from doing what he loves. If you love something your always going to find a way to do it whether it be in a sport, a career or love. If you can’t live without doing it, it will find its way back into your life. That is why this film had such a big impact on me. “Few Words” taught me that if you have a passion for something, it doesn’t matter what it is, nothing else will get in the way of it.