TRUCKEE, Calif. – Professional snowboarder Kimmy Fasani is known as a trailblazer in women’s snowboarding, from being the first woman to land a double backflip, and leading the way in contract changes for motherhood, to now releasing a new documentary on her life. The expansive journey taking her all around the world began here, in Truckee, Calif.

“It was the foundation of how I found the mountains,” Fasani said, who was born and raised in the Truckee region, something she delves into in the documentary. “I was always exposed to a lot of adventures.”

After graduating high school, Fasani embarked on another adventure, moving to Mammoth for college and to pursue snowboarding. Fast forward over twenty years, Mammoth is still where she remains, now with her with husband, Chris Benchetler, and kids Koa and Zeppelin.

Growing their family in concert with careers as professional athletes is central to Fasani and Benchetler’s focus in their newly released documentary—Butterfly in a Blizzard.

The illustrative name occurred by happenstance when their lead cinematographer was trying to explain the vision for the graphics of the film. “Then we were like, wait, that’s actually the perfect name,” Fasani remembers. “This juxtaposition of something so delicate navigating something so aggressive, like the storms of life.”

Many unexpected storms hit Fasani and Benchetler in the five years of filming. One of those was undergoing a double mastectomy for an aggressive form of breast cancer, just nine months postpartum with her second child, something they vulnerably share in the film.

“It was a very humbling experience,” Fasani said. “I just had to completely let down my guard and trust that going through treatment would keep me alive for longer so I could enjoy being a mom and being alive.”

They had originally set out to make a movie about two professional athletes navigating parenthood, but in just the first 8-10 months of filming, Fasani says, “We realized that there was a lot more story that could be shared.”

In order to preserve the authenticity of the story, the husband and wife decided to self-fund the project. In doing so, they could tell the story true to how it was happening—an unfiltered side—as they set sail on their journey of balancing parenthood with professional careers amid the waves of big life challenges that continued to roll in.

It makes it “The biggest story never told,” as the movie poster reads. Fasani expressed the value of being vulnerable in an day when it can be rare to come by, especially in a world where social media portrays everything so glossy.

“I feel like it makes us feel really isolated in our struggles,” Fasani says. “Yet there’s so much beauty to being able to share our personal stories so that we can not only heal our own traumas, but help others feel seen through their challenges.”

The investment in the authenticity and raw nature of their story telling has paid off in dividends of viewer connection. “Each person that watches it connects to it in a different way,” Fasani says. “Whether it was them losing a parent young in life, or navigating their parents’ cancer diagnosis, or their own childhood trauma of sexual abuse, there’s so many different ways that this film is connecting, and I hope helping others see that they’re not alone.”

The film also follows Fasani’s influence on the sport while both on the board and off in her over 20 years of professional snowboarding. This includes advocating for verbiage in contacts to allow for motherhood, which has impacted the industry as a whole. “I just really want to leave the sport better, than it was gifted to me,” she expressed.

Butterfly in a Blizzard is playing at the Tahoe Art Haus in Tahoe City for two showings on April 29.

The documentary is also available on streamers for rent and purchase.

“Ultimately my goal,” Fasani says, “is to help others feel less alone and more positively impacted in finding their own resilience.”