Kai Jones Lays Bare His Raw Recovery in TGR's New Film "Falling Into Place"

Featured Image: Teton Gravity Research

The 45th annual Breckenridge Film Festival will run September 18-21, 2025, across three venues in historic Breckenridge, Colorado. The milestone anniversary festival features 89 films and 36 filmmakers, not the least of which is the latest Teton Gravity Research (TGR) biopic, featuring Red Bull athlete Kai Jones’ (son of TGR founder Todd Jones) compelling story of resilience and survival in Falling Into Place. 

Since 1981, the Breckenridge Film Festival (BFF) has been a cornerstone of Colorado's cultural winter landscape, earning recognition as one of USA Today's "Top 20 Film Festivals" and helping establish Colorado as a destination for filmmakers. Now 45 years old, BFF joins an elite group of mountain film festivals that have achieved true longevity—alongside Italy's Trento Film Festival (1952), Canada's Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival (1976), and Colorado's Mountainfilm in Telluride (1979). What sets Breckenridge apart is its commitment to independent cinema beyond just adventure sports, creating space for diverse storytelling while maintaining authentic mountain town intimacy that festivals like 5Point in Carbondale (another personal favorite) have replicated. What began as a grassroots effort to celebrate visual storytelling has evolved into a cultural institution that's nurtured emerging talent for more than four decades.

For Freeskier fans, Saturday's Adventure Reel at the Riverwalk Center is the key screening. Kai Jones: Falling Into Place anchors the program alongside Moving Line, a documentary about the first ski-crossing of Colorado. The Kai Jones film comes from the aforementioned TGR, a Jackson Hole-based production powerhouse, that's been defining action sports cinema since 1995 with 37 films over three decades. Released last December, Falling Into Place has already won five awards across nine major festivals. Rumor has it that both Kai and Todd will be in attendance for the screening.

There's nothing more inspiring than seeing larger-than-life athletes as real people going through the same trials and hardships we all face, and Falling Into Place sets the stage for that narrative from the beginning. This isn't your typical story of shiny new sponsor laden gear straight out of the latest TGR annual shred flick. The authenticity and rawness of Falling Into Place is amplified by its demonstration of what happens when things go wrong in the mountains—and what it takes to come back from the edge.

The Story Behind the Camera

Now 19 and freshly graduated, Kai grew up in Victor, Idaho, attending public school in Driggs until the seventh grade. "I was more of an oddball," he admits about his public school experience. By that time he was filming and competing regularly, and transitioned to online school through Picabo Street Academy, a Park City-based program designed for full-time athletes, and never looked back. "I've got a super great crew of boys, we hang pretty tight together, skiing all year and riding bikes in the summer," Kai explains. After graduation, he took off solo to Bali for 15 days of surfing and hanging out. "The circle is small but super cool, a like-minded crew,” he told me.

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As you’ll see in the film, in March of 2023, at 16, Kai suffered a near-fatal injury deep in Wyoming's backcountry off of famed Teton Pass—breaking both tibias with severe damage to the menisci on both knees. But the skiing accident was just the beginning of a nightmare that would test everything he thought he knew about himself and his relationship with skiing. "The first two surgeries were for the knees, the trauma surgery," Todd explains. "Then he started fading in the hospital. They took his blood—he was going critically anemic. He'd lost half his blood, and we had to find this and figure it out on our own. Then the cavalry came in."

The 15-month recovery included lots of time at the Red Bull rehabilitation facility in Los Angeles, relearning to walk and confronting whether he wanted to, or would be able to, continue as a professional skier. Todd kept the camera rolling throughout the recovery. "Me being me, I'm always filming. Kai got injured, and as [he] started to come through it, he said, 'Dad, I'm glad you've been filming this, but you should really do something with this.'"

Editor and pro skier Clayton Vila stepped in and immediately recognized the potential. "Our buddy Clayton was like, 'dude, there's a full-length doc here. This is really cool’ and he pushed the father-son angle, and what TGR is. We realized we had a special film," Todd says. He also knew it had to be a festival film. 

Poster for Falling Into Place featuring Kai Jones

Beyond the Highlight Reel

While the film did get distribution on Red Bull TV, Todd knew it belonged on the festival circuit. "Core action sports have a shelf life," Todd explains. "From the onset, one of the goals was talking about perseverance and overcoming. We wanted to get it out there to inspire more people, so the festival circuit made sense; it hit the right markets and our audience."

The strategy has paid off. "The film has won five awards so far, and this is the ninth major festival that it's in," Todd says. "It shows up in these places and people get more and more excited for it." Released last December, the film has found unexpected longevity. "It keeps giving. Distribution is really hard, but it keeps having legs."

For Kai, the project was deeply personal. "I'm super proud of this piece—it's the most proud project I've ever done. It's my story from highs to lows. I felt very isolated and alone and wished I had more sense of connection at that time. And I told my dad I really wanted to tell this story."

The film goes beyond any existing narrative around comeback stories in skiing today. The ski media landscape moves at such high speeds, with seasonal highlight after highlight, when you slow down and witness the reality of what it costs to play at this level, your awareness for what these athletes endure increases.

At TGR risk management is taken seriously, Todd said when I asked about the haters. "We do an annual safety course for all 20 production people—we train for safety and preparation," Todd explains. "What we do is inherently super risky. We set ourselves up to be super dialed and mitigate as many factors as we can. The mountains give us so much, but they're also really dangerous and there are consequences. All of us doing this at this level accept those consequences, but we do it with preparation and being as dialed as possible. We're out there to have fun, but shit happens when you're playing at that level."

"Kai got a ton of hatred, I got hatred," Todd notes. "In the social media world, the haters are everywhere." But the positive response has been overwhelming. "We get a ton of outreach—people who have seen the story and been inspired," he says.

This past season marked Kai's triumphant return. "This was his best season ever," Todd says. "It’s cool for a mom and dad to see him out with his homies, having fun, filming." Kai is now back to throwing double cork 1080s and working on taking tricks to bigger natural terrain. For Todd, this represents a different side of his filmmaking beyond TGR's annual films. He's worked on bio docs before, including Lindsey Vonn for HBO, and his own TGR doc on the tragic story of surfer Andy Irons, Kissed By God. "I love the shred stuff and the annual film, but I also love to deploy the craft and tell deeper, more powerful stories," Todd explains.

Kai taming a face in Girdwood, AK

The film succeeds because of the way it handles these themes without making them the focus. The introspection and raw honesty sandwich incredible skiing footage captured throughout Kai's journey, making this one of the most compelling action sports documentaries in recent memory.

Festival Details

When: September 18-21, 2025 

Where: Three venues in Breckenridge—The Eclipse Theater, Riverwalk Center and Breck Backstage Theater (all walkable from Main Street) 

Passes: Available at www.breckfilmfest.eventive.org 

Key Screening: Adventure Reel on Saturday, September 20, featuring Kai Jones: Falling Into Place and Moving Line at Riverwalk Center

Other Festival Highlights:

• Opening Night (Sept. 18): The Best You Can (comedy starring Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and Oscar nominee Judd Hirsch) at Riverwalk Center

• Friday Night (Sept. 19): Rebuilding (drama starring Josh O'Connor and Meghann Fahy about a father rebuilding after losing his ranch in a wildfire) at Riverwalk Center

• Special Anniversary Events: Champagne toasts, retrospective storytelling sessions with filmmakers, special anniversary auction and commemorative keepsakes

• Panels & Workshops: Interactive discussions on filmmaking, the creative process and independent cinema

More information at BreckFilm.org

Falling Into Place is also available for streaming on TGR TV, Red Bull TV, Prime Video and Apple TV.