Edinburgh Festival Theatre 27th January, and on tour across the UK and worldwide in 2024
Reviewed by Rachel Farrier
4****
Full disclosure at the start of this review: I don’t participate in any adventure sports myself and was clearly not the target demographic in a theatre full of an audience who arrived in a dazzling array of the latest in outdoor wear. However, my preconceptions about the kind of films (and protagonists who would star in them) were firmly blown away as the afternoon progressed.
The Banff Mountain Film Festival is an annual event in Banff (the one in Canada), which showcases the best in travel and adventure short films, with a selection being taken on tour thereafter, with two different programmes: the red and the blue; I watched the blue programme. This comprised six short films which took us to the heights and depths of our planet, and across a breath-taking diversity of terrain with a selection of incredibly brave (or stupid, as several of them say themselves) individuals relentlessly pursuing their own quests. I will admit that I was braced for a certain type of TV adventurer-vibe, so it was refreshing and also somehow encouraging to watch really average, normal people attempting to achieve remarkable things: people like Mustafa, whose passion for skiing was matched by his undimmable cheerfulness, or Katie, whose ungroundable high spirits complemented her drive to break the record for the deepest caving expedition. (Viewers with claustrophobia should note that my husband had his eyes closed for much of Subterreanean, the longest film in the programme which also records an expedition to reach the longest cave in Canada.)
The programme doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects. Adventure tourism comes with a carbon cost, and Going Greenland, which records the efforts of US adventurers Rachael and Jessica to travel to Western Greenland in a solar-powered sailboat, acknowledges that both took long-haul flights. But who isn’t compromised when it comes to our complicated relationship with fossil fuels? The purpose, they said, was to show what is possible.
The films, needless to say, are truly astonishing: from Go-Pro footage para-base jumping from one of the highest peaks in Pakistan to climbing the walls of fresh-water sinkholes in Mexico, the programme continually puts you right at the heart of the action; thankfully (for me), from the comfort and safety of your seat.