Cross-country skiing is one of the most grueling winter sports there is: competitors have to push their bodies to the limit to get across the snowy finish line. Nobody pushes harder than Jessie Diggins, who is regarded as the greatest American winter endurance athlete ever; she’s certainly the most decorated, with four Olympic medals to her name. Her story is captured in the new documentary Threshold, and Collider is proud to exclusively present a sneak peek from the film before its digital release on August 28.
The film is directed by Lars and Torsten Brinkema; the brothers, like Diggins, are from Minnesota, and are making their feature debut with Threshold. Memory of a Killer star Patrick Dempsey serves as an executive producer on the documentary. He’s no stranger to the thrill of endurance competition himself, as he has a passion for auto racing and has participated in the venerable 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race several times. When asked about working on Threshold, Dempsey told Collider:
“I grew up skiing in the backwoods of Maine, and it was incredibly exciting when I met the Brinkema Brothers and learned that they were making a film about a skier that I’ve followed for quite some time. It’s a sport that on the surface is so peaceful, yet when you see the fastest in the world going head to head, it’s quite the opposite. It demands tremendous grit and endurance, with athletes frequently falling to the ground in exhaustion when they cross the line.
But as I got to know Lars and Torsten, and the story they were telling, it became clear to me that this film was about much more than skiing. At the heart of Threshold is Jessie’s courage to be honest about something that so many people struggle with in silence. Mental health doesn’t discriminate, and neither does the pressure to perform. Eating disorders are so prevalent yet still so rarely talked about openly. What Torsten and Lars captured is a deeply personal story that has the potential to resonate far beyond the world of elite athletics.”
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In the clip, it’s the opener of the FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski et de Snowboard) cross-country World Cup 2023-2024 season, and Diggins is looking down the barrel of an arduous 20-kilometer race through the icy wilderness of Ruka, Finland. It’s bitterly cold, but Diggins’ biggest struggle won’t be with the elements, but with herself. She’s recently suffered a relapse in her ongoing battle with bulimia, and she’s gone public with that to increase awareness of the heartbreak of eating disorders. She now feels she has to prove to herself and to the rest of her competitors that she can still do this, despite the target she believes she’s placed on her back. As the clip concludes, the starter pistol fires, and she’s off.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
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☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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How Did Diggins Perform at the 2026 Winter Olympics?
Diggins previously announced that the 2025-2026 season would be her last in active competition. She had a rough start to the Milano Cortina Games, suffering a crash in her first race that left her with bruised ribs. However, she recovered to win the bronze medal in the 10-kilometer freestyle event. Following the Olympics, she would go on to win the women’s overall and distance titles in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup season.
Threshold will be available to rent or own digitally on August 28. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
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