FILMS
Browse the official selections for our 17th Annual Flagship Festival
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2024
Films
2 Legs Is 2 Easy
Director: Tamara Susa

Mountain town culture is all about highlighting the ones that are the most adventurous and inspire others to push their limits in their outdoorsy lives. In Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, specifically in the Roaring Fork Valley, one resident stands out as an inspiration to many.

Elladj
Director: Mike Schwartz

Elladj follows the remarkable journey of Elladj Balde, a Canadian figure skater who found his voice and fan base through wild ice-skating. The film centers on the transformative power of embracing one’s passion over measurable results.

26,000 Days
Director: Henry Behel

This is the story of Eric Tucker, an airshow pilot who turns most pilots’ nightmares into a beautiful dance. Through flying dead-stick-turning his own engine off and falling out of the sky-Eric confronts the challenge of how to make the most of life and live without regret.

Slides On The Mountain
Director: Seth Gillis

Two brothers from the Lil’wat Nation, Riki, and Talon, set out to ski Ts’zil (Slides On The Mountain) but face a steep learning curve before they can make their historic attempt.

A Film About Getting After It: Jackson Marvell
Director: RC Cone

Frostbite. Wrecked trucks. And keg parties on southern Utah towers. Take a lighthearted journey into the life and feats of alpinist Jackson Marvell, including the 2023 “Round Trip Ticket” first alpine ascent of Jannu.

The Dance Card
Director: Brandon Lavoie

A father and his daughter gear up to compete in a unique race known as the Ride & Tie World Championship for the first time in six years. Whether riding their horse, Coda, or running through the woods, this father/daughter duo is determined to set records while strengthening their everlasting bond.

Suspended In Space
Director: Cameron Thuman

Two skiers get lost in time as the frozen winter scape of the Yukon Territory awakens their souls.

Stone Dead
Director: Freddie Gluck

Journey into the enigmatic world of Rex, a self-made sculptor who engages in philosophical musings about mortality — verbalizing his abandonment of fear to headstones.

Lola
Director: Ian Durkin

Musician, Griff Washburn, AKA Goth Babe, has seen some peaks and valleys. Just recently, Griff’s tiny house burnt to the ground, and with it, all of his possessions and unreleased music. He then suffered a traumatic brain injury while surfing causing cancellations of future tours and festivals for a year. Follow Griff as he looks at the nothing he’s been left with and figures out what to do next.

Jackson Goldstone - Solo
Director: Scott Secco

When he’s not turning heads trackside, Jackson Goldstone will be found turning trails into his own personal playground. While his 9 to 5 is piloting his SyndicateV10 downhill bike down heinous tracks in pursuit of podium glory, he absolutely loves to get out on his local trails with his daily driver and have some fun.

Moving Mountains
Director: Jessa Williams

Tre’lan Michael, a young, black man from Oklahoma, travels to a remote Hawaiian island in search of a better life and soon becomes enamored with big wave surfing. What seems a pointless pursuit to most, now serves as his anchor in all of life’s challenges.

Running Up For Air
Director: Forest Woodward

The Salt Lake City ultra-running community (led by Jared Campbell) come together to organize an endurance race that aims to raise awareness (and money) for air quality issues in their home city...and beyond.

Taras
Director: Zeppelin Zeerip

A Ukrainian soldier who fought on the front lines returns to the mountains and attempts to assimilate back into everyday society.

River Mamma
Director: Sarah Hamilton

River Mamma - follows Elisha McArthur - a lifelong raft guide and single mom, and her relationship with her teenage goth daughter, Charlotte, who has no interest in rivers at all. It is an intimate portrait of an eclectic family dynamic, teenage angst, and the way nature can help a mother and daughter reconnect.

Designed by Disaster
Director: James ‘Q’ Martin

Designed by Disaster is an inspiring story about Danny Giovale, a passionate climber whose life-changing accident in the Dolomites compels him to address a critical safety gap in mountain travel. Three decades later, equipped with the product he invented, Danny returns to complete the climb that nearly took his life.

Don’t Doubt The Trout
Director: Isabela Zawistowska

Bernard and Rebecca of the band, PAR AVION, are not your average surf rock musicians. They’re passionate fly-fishing anglers and conservationists who are advocating for the protection of California’s endangered Southern Steelhead.

Won’t Give Up
Director: Abdul Kassamali

Critically acclaimed drag queen and vocalist Pattie Gonia joined 19-time Grammy award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Indigenous trans musician and Tiny Desk Contest winner Quinn Christopherson to write a climate change anthem.

Planetwalker
Directors: Dominic Gill, Nadia Gill

In 1971 John Francis, known the world over as ‘Planetwalker,’ witnessed an oil tanker collision in the San Francisco Bay. The sight of oiled birds on the shoreline caused him to give up motorized transport and rely solely on his own two feet. Months after that, he took a vow of silence convinced that listening rather than adding fuel to any fire was the way ahead. During the next seventeen silent years, he listened and studied the world around him.

Ancestral Footprints of The Grand Canyon
Directors: Cheyne Lempe, Joe Grant

The newly designated area, Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, protects over a million acres of land. Though this is a huge success for the indigenous people of the area, it still doesn’t protect their water source from a single remaining uranium mine in close proximity to their sacred sites.

Mirasol, Looking At The Sun
Director: Ben Knight

Water is a finite resource — and an essential one. For farmers, it’s everything. In this poignant new film, award-winning filmmaker Ben Knight challenges us to think about land and water use in the West through an intimate portrait of a rural farming community in Pueblo, Colorado as they fight to protect their water and land, and in turn, their culture and livelihood.

Strong Grandma
Directors: Cecilia Brown, Winslow Crane-Murdoch

95-year-old Catherine Kuehn is a world record-winning deadlifter. As she prepares for her last competition she reflects on the love, and the loss, that brought her to this moment.

109 Below
Director: Nick Martini

109 Below tells a tale of resilience and grit when elite rescue volunteers go out of their way to save the lives of strangers. An attempted rescue on Mount Washington in 1982 changed not only the course of two climbers’ lives, but the lives of the rescuers who attempted to save them — and the future of prosthetics, forever.

Canyon Chorus
Director: Chris Cresci

Set against the backdrop of Desolation Canyon, UT, Mikah Meyer, a world-record traveler and LGBTQ+ advocate, reflects with three close friends and his mentor, Larry Edwards, on their stories and the power of mentorship within the queer community.

Top Sportsman
Director: Oliver Sutro

Captain Dick Fisher is not a real captain, but that doesn’t stop him from hiring a cameraman to follow him around and play pretend for a while. Dick has grand aspirations of hosting his own fishing TV show and following in the footsteps of his long-lost dad.

Winter's Eve
Director: Max Lowe

Inspired by the plight our planet faces under the threat of climate change, critically-acclaimed musician Kishi Bashi composes his new song Winter’s Eve on the tundra of Churchill, Manitoba. In connecting with local community members and wildlife scientists, he reflects on our responsibility to our planet and our descendants.

Reel Rock: Jirishanca
Directors: Josh Lowell, Peter Mortimer

Renowned alpinists Josh Wharton and Vince Anderson attempt a free ascent of the Jirishanca, an epic 20,000-foot peak in the Peruvian Andes. The duo will have to tackle 5.13 face climbing, horizontal ice roofs, technical mixed terrain, and treacherous snow mushrooms as they reconcile the inherent risk of climbing with their love of alpine adventure.

Last Lap
Directors: Abdul Kassamali, Tim Kressin

Ian Gonzalez wanted his running community on the South Side of Chicago to have easy access to trying on shoes and getting running gels. When he looked for a store and didn’t find one - he started his own. That was three years ago, and now, he needs to know if this community on the South Side is ready to take the next step in supporting him in opening up a bigger store.

Above The Noise
Director: Adam De Silva

Above The Noise explores how athlete Maja Kuczynska uses the sport of skydiving to escape the chaos of the modern world.

The Dog Musher
Directors: Silas Karbo, Simon Scionka

The last dog musher of an Alaskan Native village meditates on life and what drives him to continue his passion.

The Polar Passage
Directors: Andrew Harrison Brown, Renan Ozturk

An Inuit guide joins a scrappy team of adventurers attempting to sail a fiberglass boat across 8,000 miles from Maine to Alaska over the course of four months. But when a storm of sea ice threatens the entire expedition, the crew is forced to reconsider their preconceived notions of the Arctic and the cost of exposure for the Inuit community in the wake of a growing tourism industry.

Concrete Is Hard, So Are Carp
Director: RC Cone

David Gravette has been a professional skater since he was 17. Over the course of his injuries, Dave picked up fly fishing, which has become a pursuit that allows him to focus when he can’t skate, and a way for him to express his creativity.

Actual Air
Director: Mattias Evangelista

In the depths of the Pacific Northwest, a skier reflects on his life growing up in the shadow of Mt.Baker.

Soundscape
Director: Timmy O’neill

Soundscape features Erik Weihenmayer, a global adventure athlete and author who is completely blind, as he ascends a massive alpine rock face deep in the Sierra Nevada. Using expert camera work from Mikey Schaefer and emotive, novel animation to bring to life a concept by adaptive climbing pioneer Timmy O’Neill, the film is a surprising and soulful adventure.

Beyond Normal
Directors: Anna Wilder Burns, Jordyn Romero

In this intimate portrayal of resilience and self-discovery. Professional surfer Becca Speak battles to reclaim her identity and return to the waves after a devastating brain injury suffered during a competition.

The Old Men Of The Mountain
Director: Kirk Horton

The oldest running team in the United States competes yearly in a 50-mile relay race in Pennsylvania. Heck, they might even be the oldest running team in the world. Led by their fearless, 103-year-old captain, the members of the team don’t care about their ages. All that matters is they keep moving forward, physically and as friends.

Seven Phases of Madness
Director: Zacharie Turgeon

Welcome aboard the rollercoaster that is Mathos’ twisted mind while experiencing yet another journey on a gravel bike. Mad or not mad? Yours to judge.

The Tengu Club
Directors: Britton Caillouette, Hilary Hutcheson

The Tengu Club, North America’s oldest salmon fishing club, reflects the enduring legacy of Japanese American culture in Puget Sound. Founded in the 1930s by those excluded from local clubs due to their heritage, it persists through generations, upholding traditions, preserving history, and sharing the camaraderie of fishing tales.

Paddle Tribal Waters II: Bring The Salmon Home
Director: Rush Sturges

After a successful summer program in 2022, the Paddle Tribal Waters initiative welcomes a new cohort of Indigenous youth into their beginner kayaking program.

Ascend
Directors: Kathryn Francis, Campbell Brewer

Due to the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, Mina Haniya, and Rabia find refuge in Ascend, a nonprofit aiding their escape to other countries. Yosemite Search and Rescue’s Merryn and Michelle offer solace in Yosemite, where climbing provides not only refuge but also a connection to their homeland amid displacement.

Fall Harvest
Director: Keenan Desplanques

In 2023, Nicholi Rogatkin had a season-ending injury and was forced to sit out for the summer. Fall Harvest highlights the magic of getting back on a bike again after an injury.

School Of Fish
Directors: Oliver Sutro, Colin Arisman

Indigenous people and salmon have been intertwined for thousands of years in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Today, kids learn from elders to fish but must also learn to fight, as pollution from Pebble Mine threatens this pristine ecosystem. Can the next generation defend the most prolific salmon run left on earth?