Newschoolers Names MAGMA’s TKO Movie of the Year

Movie of the Year was never going to be clean this season. Too many projects, too many directions, and too much talent all within the same winter. Heavy street spots, full-crew edits, rider-segments, and one ambitious outlier that took it home.

Newschoolers said it best: this was “without question” the hardest category to judge. The skiing went hard, the formats were all over, and the nominations list wasn’t just strong; it was messy in the best way.

They also addressed the elephant in the room: Ornada. Not fully out yet, but very real; a two-year project filmed ’23-’25, premiering in October 2025, and landing right in the same creative era as Catpiss and TKO. The question was: how do you judge something that’s longer, bigger-budget, more ambitious, and designed like a live spectacle against films built to punch you in the teeth and disappear?

Newschoolers’ take was honest: Ornada is incredible, but when it came to splitting hairs, too much of it leaned nostalgic to be their Movie of the Year.

And that’s where the category gets interesting; because once you remove the outlier, the rest turns into a comparison of execution.

They gave honorable mentions (Shimmer, Cali Rambo, Too True) and emphasized that while they wanted variety beyond street, skiing was still the deciding factor; alongside how the film was put together.

From there, the shortlist reads:

Five judges. Four different movies as individual winners.

Newschoolers’ Movie of the Year is @MAGMA.film — TKO.

Their reasoning hits like a hammer: it’s two of the most talented skiers of the current generation, at the absolute peak of their game, going the hardest they’ve ever gone.

That’s the thing about TKO: it doesn’t ask to be appreciated. It just stacks undeniable sequences until the debate stops being abstract and becomes physical. You feel it.

If you want the context behind the chaos; how TKO came together, what it took to film, what mattered, what didn’t, and why it feels like a period piece from the future, we just sat down with the winners, MAGMA, to talk through the film. That interview is the doorway.

The story doesn’t end at the trophy. We’ve also got an interview dropping soon with ecook, digging into two of the most talked-about films in the conversation, Catpiss and Ornada, and what they represent stylistically, culturally, and in terms of where the scene’s headed.

And if you missed it: we also ran an article on Jet Skis Movie, because even in a year stuffed with heavy street skiing, that project still managed to separate itself as pure street punishment.

For now, though, if you’re looking for the cleanest explanation of why TKO won: it’s not politics, not hype, not nostalgia, not rollout strategy.

It’s the skiing. And TKO is overflowing with it.