Date: 12. February 2024
Time to read: 3 min
The Mountain Film Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary in style! Between 12 and 17 February, 35 mountaineering films will be screened in Ljubljana, Domžale, Radovljica and Celje.Three of them will be premiered at the festival: Viharnik z roba (The Storm from the Edge), Tam, kjer tečejo kozorgi (Where the ibexes run) and Himalajska bojevnika (The Himalayan Warriors). Stories with a capital letter will be brought to life in lectures by mountaineers Krzystof Wielicki and Leszek Cichy, Mikhail Fomin, Edu Marin, Matteo Della Bordella and Rado Fabjan, sports climber Mina Markovič, photographer and filmmaker Rožle Bregar, mountaineering history researcher Dušan Škodič, and in a photography exhibition by festival director Silvo Karo.
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The festival will celebrate its 50th anniversary with its richest programme ever. Photo: Ciril Jazbec/slovenia.info
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The festival will run until 17 February and will be accompanied by lectures, talks, an exhibition and the latest mountaineering literature. Photo: Ukom Archive
For the 18th edition of the festival, 78 films were received and eight mountaineering films, nine climbing films, nine films about mountains, sport and adventure, and just as many films about mountain nature and culture were selected for the competition programme. They will be judged by an international jury of experts, including former creator of the TV show Mountains and People and nature conservationist Marjeta Keršič Svetel, mountaineer and mountain guide Tomaž Jakofčič, and German journalist, mountaineering publicist and film-maker Tom Dauer.
According to the Association for Mountain Culture from Domžale, which organises the festival, this year the focus of attention will be on the iconic Eternal Flame in the Karakorum Nameless Trango Tower in Pakistan. The Swiss film Eternal Sloth and the American film The Burning Flame touch on the route, and a lecture will be given by Spanish alpinist Edu Marin, who made his second free ascent in 2022.
The American film "Climbing as Rebellion" will also be screened, which, according to the organisers, touches on the current socio-political situation in the Middle East. In addition to mountaineering, climbing and sports films, several ethnographic documentaries will be screened: the Polish film Uncle Vakha's Dream, the Italian film The Gifts of Waiting and the Spanish film Mountain of Memories. From France, the caving film Explorers of the Underground and Mongolia: Valley of the Bears, about the colourful vastness of nomadic Mongolia, will be screened.
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The Cankarjev dom will also host a photographic exhibition Silvo Karo: From Wooden to Golden Cleaver by Silvo Karo, one of the main actors of the golden age of Slovenian mountaineering and the director of the festival. Photo: Ciril Jazbec/slovenia.info
The history of mountaineering will be explored in the Bosnian documentary Himalayan Warriors, about the 50-year friendship between mountaineers Stipe Božić and Viki Grošelj, and in the Swiss film The Spider in Patagonia, about the history of the conquest of the Patagonian mountains. In the same category is tonight's opening film, Storm from the Edge, 100 Years of the Skalaše, which tells the story of the Skala Tourist Club and its key players, such as Klement Jug, Joža Čop and Pavla Jesih. It is a documentary-feature film created by screenwriter and director Igor Vrtačnik.
Six Slovenian films will also be screened on the big screen: the short animated film The Wild Rooster: The Secret Life of a Year and a Quarter by Jernej Myint, the LIFE Lynx project documentary Together for the Rise by Gregor Šubic and Timothy Vrtnik, and the short film On, In and Under the Sava by Rožle Bregar, the story of mountain runners on the Julian Alps Trail Run Where the Ibex Run by Aliash Tepina, a film about Nika and Andrea's cycling ascent of Kilimanjaro Silent Power by Petr Vrčkovnik and a short film about the passionate surfer D A NN O Č by Mitja Legat.
