Banff Mountain Film Festival returns to the Panida

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Since 1995, the Panida Theater has been the local home of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which last year expanded for the first time to three nights of screenings featuring some of the best outdoors and adventure shorts in the world.

Beginning Friday, Jan. 19 and continuing Saturday, Jan. 20 and Sunday, Jan. 21, more than two dozen films covering mountain culture, sport, lifestyle, the environment and everything between will be shown, with an average of eight entries per night.

Courtesy photo.

Presented by Mountain Fever Productions, tickets are $18 in advance at panida.org and $20 at the door (300 N. First Ave.).

Among the opening night entries is Cross Countries, from France, which follows mountain biker Kilian Bron on a tour through some of the most beautiful trails in North America, and The Ascension Series: Morag Skelton, from the U.K., focused on a deaf mountain climber who believes nothing should get in the way of anyone experiencing nature.

Named “Best Short Film,” U.S. entry School of Fish is a compelling portrait of the millennia-spanning relationship between the salmon and Indigenous people of Bristol Bay, Alaska, exploring their knowledge of harvesting, preserving and sharing fish, all of which are central to their culture and contain important lessons.

Chronoception, from France, focuses on Thomas Delfino, Léa Klaue and Aurélien Lardy as they follow the trail of nomadic peoples and the ancient Silk Roads on an expedition to reach one of the most remote places in the world.

Films on Saturday night include One Degree° #Peru, from France, following a kitesurfing adventure combining outdoor adventure and activism that showcases current environmental changes among some of the highest alpine lakes in the world in the Andes.

Winner of “Best Film: Adventure,” Canadian entry Subterranean introduces audiences to two teams of hobbyist cavers who are poised to break records for the longest and deepest caves in Canada. One effort seeks to push the caving depth record with a descent into the Bisaro Anima cave in the Rockies, while another attempts to link two tunnel systems to create the longest known cave in the country.

Closer to home, U.S. film Range Rider looks at the conflict and controversy surrounding the repopulation of wolves in Washington state, where ranchers and push back against the presence of the animals, and range rider Daniel Curry finds himself in the middle — patrolling wild areas on horseback to create a buffer between wolves and the cattle herds that graze on public lands.

The film fest concludes Sunday with a number of “Best Of” films, including Soundscape, from the U.S., which earned the “Creative Excellence Award” for sharing the sightless experience of climbing a mountain via echo location, touch and imagination. The film features Erik Weihenmayer, a global adventure athlete and author who is fully blind, as he ascends a massive alpine rock face deep in the Sierra Nevadas.

Ranked “Best Film: Snow Sports,” U.S. film The Blackcountry Journal is the story of a skier who contemplates his connection to skiing and the mountains as he hurries through the streets of L.A., where his path takes a turn after bumping into a jazz musician who helps him discover the correlation between jazz and skiing — described as “an expression of art, skiing and Black culture.”

Finally, Canadian film Leo & Chester — named “Best Film: Mountain Culture” — focuses on Leo, a sought-after rock star with a promising career, who turns his back on the industry to pursue a life on the land with a herd of buffalo.

Film blocks start at 7 p.m. on Jan. 19 and Jan. 20, and 6 p.m. on Jan. 21. Doors open an hour before the show. For more info and full film listings, visit banffcentre.ca/banffmountainfestival.