Banff Mountain Film Festival Festival Theatre Edinburgh 22nd February 2025 Review
Banff Mountain Film Festival UK and Ireland Tour 2025 screenings at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh was, as ever, a warm and friendly atmosphere with a wide age range of people attending. This review is for the evening Red Programme films, the afternoon Blue Programme films having been shown earlier.
As always, the films selected for this tour featured a mixture of short films and longer ones ranging in a diverse subject matter, and encompasses small lower budget projects with the obviously far larger productions which were often put together with the help of many different sponsors. Behind each film, however, there was still a human interest story and in some this was at the individual level whilst others were community based.
Chasing rivers and waterfalls to kayak in or down may not be something that some of us associate with mountains, but this is exactly what professional kayaker Aniol Serrasolses lives for, and how far he will travel to find these wonders of nature formed by melting ice caps and gigantic glaciers was the subject of tonight’s first film “Ice Waterfalls”.
At 36 minutes, this was one of the longer films in this programme but, even then, editing the long time scale of this project down to this must have been a huge effort in itself. It was interesting to see for once a film where one person is honest about the sheer amount of time, pre-planning, and rigorous preparation that can go into a single moment that can be over in seconds. Also good to see Aniol giving full credit to everyone in the team that made his magical moment possible.
Mountain bike riders always seem to find a way into this programme and often the films are spectacular. This film “Dolomites”, 33 minutes of daring and jaw-dropping riding featuring pro mountain biker Kilian Bron was no different in this respect, but there was also one big important element to this film. Here Kilian was quick to point out just how many years of hard training, extensive daily routines, and meticulous pre-planning for a run like this make it possible for him to make the difficult and very dangerous look almost easy. His warning to people who do not have his skills or have not spent the time to develop them to simply not attempt to emulate his mountain bike runs, particularly on social media for nothing more than getting viewers.
Staying with mountain bikers, the short 3 minute film, “The Streif” featured mountain bike phenomenon Fabio Wibmer reaching top speeds of over 100 km/h and making many spectacular jumps along the way as he sped down a ski slope in Kitzbuhel in Austria as it was preparing for legendary “The Streif” ski race.
Another short film, Soul Flyers was simply 5 minutes of one of man's oldest dreams, to be in the sky and soaring like a bird. Dropped from a helicopter, three men made the longest terrain-flying wingsuit line in history, travelling over 7.5 km whilst passing at low level altitudes over the surface of Mont Blanc.
There have been many films about the obsession of climbers and their determination to never give up on a rock surface until they conquer it. In many respects, “Dropping Molly”, which follows the path of Colorado-based climber Molly Mitchell from life threatening injury to getting back to climbing, is no different. What is different here is that Molly also has to deal with her own mental health diagnosis and come to terms with how that may also have shaped her climbing career and life over the years.
Perhaps the most unusual film is this programme is “Welcome To The Pit” and it took us just south of the Arctic Circle to Yellowknife in Canada, a place where you simply learn to live with an isolated community and extremely low temperatures outside, or you leave and go and live somewhere else.
This film is about a community that is used to having to do things for itself, and the old quarry that, due to a massive community effort that is always ongoing, has changed this area into a place where skiers, snow-boarders, and people who just want to help out have made a real and lasting difference to so many people of all ages in their community.
If you want further information on this film festival visit the Banff Mountain Film Festival website.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
As always, the films selected for this tour featured a mixture of short films and longer ones ranging in a diverse subject matter, and encompasses small lower budget projects with the obviously far larger productions which were often put together with the help of many different sponsors. Behind each film, however, there was still a human interest story and in some this was at the individual level whilst others were community based.
Chasing rivers and waterfalls to kayak in or down may not be something that some of us associate with mountains, but this is exactly what professional kayaker Aniol Serrasolses lives for, and how far he will travel to find these wonders of nature formed by melting ice caps and gigantic glaciers was the subject of tonight’s first film “Ice Waterfalls”.
At 36 minutes, this was one of the longer films in this programme but, even then, editing the long time scale of this project down to this must have been a huge effort in itself. It was interesting to see for once a film where one person is honest about the sheer amount of time, pre-planning, and rigorous preparation that can go into a single moment that can be over in seconds. Also good to see Aniol giving full credit to everyone in the team that made his magical moment possible.
Mountain bike riders always seem to find a way into this programme and often the films are spectacular. This film “Dolomites”, 33 minutes of daring and jaw-dropping riding featuring pro mountain biker Kilian Bron was no different in this respect, but there was also one big important element to this film. Here Kilian was quick to point out just how many years of hard training, extensive daily routines, and meticulous pre-planning for a run like this make it possible for him to make the difficult and very dangerous look almost easy. His warning to people who do not have his skills or have not spent the time to develop them to simply not attempt to emulate his mountain bike runs, particularly on social media for nothing more than getting viewers.
Staying with mountain bikers, the short 3 minute film, “The Streif” featured mountain bike phenomenon Fabio Wibmer reaching top speeds of over 100 km/h and making many spectacular jumps along the way as he sped down a ski slope in Kitzbuhel in Austria as it was preparing for legendary “The Streif” ski race.
Another short film, Soul Flyers was simply 5 minutes of one of man's oldest dreams, to be in the sky and soaring like a bird. Dropped from a helicopter, three men made the longest terrain-flying wingsuit line in history, travelling over 7.5 km whilst passing at low level altitudes over the surface of Mont Blanc.
There have been many films about the obsession of climbers and their determination to never give up on a rock surface until they conquer it. In many respects, “Dropping Molly”, which follows the path of Colorado-based climber Molly Mitchell from life threatening injury to getting back to climbing, is no different. What is different here is that Molly also has to deal with her own mental health diagnosis and come to terms with how that may also have shaped her climbing career and life over the years.
Perhaps the most unusual film is this programme is “Welcome To The Pit” and it took us just south of the Arctic Circle to Yellowknife in Canada, a place where you simply learn to live with an isolated community and extremely low temperatures outside, or you leave and go and live somewhere else.
This film is about a community that is used to having to do things for itself, and the old quarry that, due to a massive community effort that is always ongoing, has changed this area into a place where skiers, snow-boarders, and people who just want to help out have made a real and lasting difference to so many people of all ages in their community.
If you want further information on this film festival visit the Banff Mountain Film Festival website.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Please note that unless requested by performers/pr/venues that this website no longer uses the "star rating" system on reviews.