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Hearts racing, blood flowing and an eagerness to strap on some hiking gear and a go-pro. It can only be one thing: Banff.

Returning to its home in Edinburgh at the Festival Theatre, where once more audiences are reminded of the venue’s tremendously clear and large-scale screen, the Banff Mountain Film Festival is an annual event, which this year saw the World Tour visit more than 500 venues in over forty countries, in a unique celebration of adventure and adventurers.

It’s a rare opportunity for adrenaline lovers to sit side-by-side in appreciation for the arm-chair enthusiasts and those who struggle to embark on these intense and world-building experiences. A superb initiative to combine the world of filmmaking with an appreciation of the outdoor world in tandem with the festival’s sister event the Ocean Film Festival and Mountain Film Festival which will arrive at the same venue in Edinburgh next year.

The limits of the human condition: mentally and physically, are showcased in one of two cinematic programmes: this evening, we were treated to the Red Programme consisting of:

A Baffin Vacation (Sarah McNair-Landry and Erik Boomer)

 Walking on Clouds (Renan Kamizi)

 Wild Waters (David Arnaud)

 Flow (Maxime Moulin)

 Bridge Boys (Nick Rosen and Peter Mortimer)

 The Nine Wheels (Santiago Burin des Roziers)

And though the cinematic nature of each film varies in method, style, tone and topic, the common threads of linking us all together as one – with an appreciation and adoration for the natural world, rings through both programmes. There’s a distinct value in the mental nature of it all at play here, especially in the red programme, where the physicality of it all is captured in the most often utilised first-person perspective of the films, but the process behind them conveys much more than simple recordings of staggering feats and goals. 

The stand-out of the evening, the festival ‘people’s award’ rightly goes to the verité and autobiographical nature of Wild Waters, which charters Nouria Newman’s evolution from keen kayaker to champion of the sport and the limits they push themselves. A lengthier short film, edited keenly to a forty-five-minute runtime, Arnaud’s film captures scale in every shot as Newman seeks out taller and taller waterfalls to kayak over. The storytelling beyond this finds a world, unsurprisingly, dominated by men, and is threaded into the pacing which is slowly dismantled as Newman grows in recognition. 

Our shortest films of the night, Flow and Walking on Clouds push the acrophobics to the limit with their command of space and colour. Renan Kamizi’s Walking on Clouds fuses extraordinary feats of slackline walking between two hot-air balloons at a height of almost 2,000m with a powerful score that impresses the scale of this event on the audience. Maxime Moulin’s Flow continues the growing use of drone footage to manipulate distance and show the feats of lone figure Sam Favret as they make the most of a closed ski resort and showcase a command over the snow and mountains themselves. 

The concluding part of the Blue Programme’s The Process, Bridge Boys draws audiences together with the most streamlined narrative in Tom Randall, a natural on camera and an enthusiastic presence to follow in Rosen and Mortimer’s film. Similarly (though with entirely different set-ups and motivations) A Baffin Vacation places the person (people) at the heart of the film as Eric Boomer and Sarah McNair-Landry turn their expedition into a vacation which encompasses everything and anything. Concluding is a more emotive piece with The Nine Wheels, which channels the human spirit into the adventure in a canny piece of authentic filmmaking and editing, one which follows the Schneeberger family as they grapple with life-changing illnesses to re-evaluate what is truly important. 

As the adrenaline settles, and the cold air of an impending Autumn greets those leaving the Red Programme, a reminder of the value of these snapshots of the human condition and the fragility of the natural world around us lingers for a while. The Banff Mountain Film Festival is always a tremendous treat for audiences in Edinburgh and not one to pass on for thrill-seekers, adventurers, and those with an adoration of life, cinema, and those who defy the limitations imposed upon them.