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The Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour is returning to Sedona. For the tenth year, the Sedona International Film Festival is bringing the spirit of outdoor adventure and mountain culture to red rock country. This year’s screenings feature the world’s best mountain sport, culture and environmental films, letting you experience the thrill and challenges of the mountain environments that inspire us all.
The Sedona tour stop is two nights again this year: Tuesday, March 5 and Wednesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at the Sedona Performing Arts Center. Each night will feature a different program of films. Audience members can attend either one of the nights or get a package discount to attend both evenings.
Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival is one of the largest and most prestigious mountain festivals in the world! Hot on the heels of the festival that is held every fall in beautiful Banff, Alberta, the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour hits the road. With stops planned in more than 600 communities and more than 40 countries across the globe, the Banff World Tour celebrates amazing achievements in outdoor storytelling and filmmaking worldwide!
From the over 400 entries submitted into the festival each year, award-winners and audience favorites are among the films that are carefully selected to play in theatres around the world.
Traveling to remote vistas, analyzing topical environmental issues, and bringing audiences up-close and personal with adrenaline-packed action sports the 2022/2023 World Tour is an exhilarating and provocative exploration of the mountain world.
Featured films on Tuesday, March 5 include:
• Fuego: An ode to escape and adventure travel, “Fuego” is a new mountain biking masterpiece. From Guatemala to Peru via Bolivia, the team scoured the most beautiful spots for two months bring back breathtaking images.
• The Best Skier You’ve Never Heard Of: Adrien Grabinski needed a change. After a successful ski racing career that took him from the Alberta team to the Canadian national team as a junior, he ventured further west. He discovered his true calling at Shames Mountain, a remote little co-op non-profit ski area near Terrace, B.C. The mountains, the snow, and the big lines first captivated him, but the local ski community truly stole his heart.
• Driving Sweep: Few river guides ever get the chance to drive Idaho’s iconic sweep boat. “Driving Sweep” follows Katie Veteto as she learns how to “drive sweep” down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. She’s learned the rapids and the river. Now she learns to drive 4,000lbs down steep rocky rapids.
• Leo & Chester: Leo, a sought-after rock star with a promising career, turns his back on the industry to pursue a life on the land with a herd of buffalo.
• Canada Vertical: After years of preparation, a team of highly motivated Quebeckers set out on one of the longest wilderness expeditions ever documented. Stage one involves skiing in relentless polar conditions from Ellesmere Island to the Northwest Passage where the challenge was reaching the mainland. Cue canoes for a 2,000 km journey across Nunavut and the Northwest Territories until they reach the first dirt road available where bikes are waiting to be pedaled 4,000km to Point Pelee in Ontario.
• Desert Wings: Paramotoring is a niche, largely undocumented, and little-known flying sport. This piece brings it to light in a rightfully epic way. Shot over 6 days, with multiple paramotor pilots, Desert Wings highlights some of the most dramatic desert landscapes in the American Southwest.
• Slides on the Mountain: Two young brothers from the Lil'wat Nation set out to ski the sacred mountain they were raised beneath, pushing both themselves and their culture to evolve.
• After You’ve Gone: A story about a female fishing guide in the Adirondacks overcoming the hardships of battling cancer and losing her husband. She then takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Argentina where she is reignited with hope, passion, and life.
• Two Point Four: Not your typical family holiday, but this is not your typical family. Leo Houlding, his wife Jess, their two children Freya (9 yrs) and Jackson (5 yrs) climb Norway's national mountain via a 2,000 ft big wall.
Featured films on Wednesday, March 6 include:
• No Way: Jean-Baptiste Chandelier takes his unique low-flying, ground-skimming art combining paragliding and filmmaking to a whole new level.
• Soundscape: “Soundscape” shares 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 Nevada. It is a surprising and soulful adventure.
• JoJo: A Toad Musical: Join JoJo Nyaribo, a young nature lover and wildlife advocate as he explores the meaning of biodiversity and stewardship in his own backyard. This story weaves together Jojo’s love for the natural world with his journey in learning about, and fighting against, a specific fungus that has been wiping out a staggering number of amphibians around the globe. Jojo believes we can all make a difference.
• Subterranean: In a remarkable year, two gritty teams of hobbyist cavers are poised to break records for the longest and deepest caves in Canada. After discovering a flooded underground chamber, Katie, a daytime accountant, becomes obsessed with returning to the Bisaro Anima cave in the Rockies to push the caving depth record. At the same time, a passionate Vancouver Island team is attempting to link two tunnel systems to create the longest known cave in the country. From abyssal, muddy crawls to heart-pounding, vertical pits, and underwater squeezes, these are places where no person has been before.
• To Be Frank: Frank Paine is a 73-year-old South Bay icon and humble local legend whose life orbits around a two-block stretch of beach. His unforgettable mustache and magnetic spirit are what most first notice, but Frank’s layers expose a depth that might answer some questions that surfers continually ask themselves. Surfing, which, for some, becomes lost in isolation, is made whole again with Frank.
• Crying Glacier: The louder the glacier, the stronger the melt. The creaking, cracking and rippling is the voice of impermanence. Sound artist Ludwig Berger shows how important it is to listen to the world that surrounds us.
• Near the River: In the tourism town of Livingstone, Zambia, a group of local men who make their living portering kayaks aspire to become safety kayakers on the Zambezi River. The proposed Batoka Gorge Hydroelectric Scheme threatens to flood the famous rapids of the Zambezi and eliminate river related jobs.
• Sea to Sky Trail Series: Progression: One step at a time, the trail-running community is constantly moving upward. In recent years progression has vaulted forward, with runners blending inspiration from the world of alpinism, rock climbing, and running and tackling technical terrain in a way we’ve never seen.
• Pioneers: Tandem XC Skiing: After winning the American Birkebeiner — the largest cross-country ski race in North America — Joe Dubay was disqualified for wearing the wrong bib. Now, 11 years later, Joe and his former roommate who lent him the bib document their return to the Birkebeiner to pioneer a new sport: tandem cross-country skiing.
Join the Sedona International Film Festival and film and adventure enthusiasts when the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour brings the spirit of outdoor adventure to Sedona, at the Sedona Performing Arts Center (995 Upper Red Rock Loop Road) on Tuesday, March 5 and Wednesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. each night.
The Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour stop in Sedona is made possible by a generous grant from the Leo & Rhea Fay Fruhman Foundation.