Hot Docs

American snowboarder Kevin Pearce kept beating his rival, Shaun White, killing him with huge air in the lead-up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. The Games were set to be a showdown between two action sport superstars, but Pearce’s half-pipe domination came to a crashing halt while training a cab double cork just weeks before the big event. “The brave do not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all,” is the code by which pioneering athletes live by…and increasingly die. The Crash Reel confronts their invincible attitude and the limitless expansion of extreme sports by putting the permanent effects of traumatic brain injury into the spotlight. Pearce’s story is a jaw-dropping cautionary tale and a miraculous comeback, as well as a testament to his family’s inexhaustible support and understanding through the loss of impulse control and memory impairment that mark Kevin’s new life with an invisible disability. Angie Driscoll