The Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival is a programming-driven, competitive event bringing the best films and books on mountains and the spirit of adventure from around the world to the mountain town of Banff, Alberta. The Festival provides an opportunity for filmmakers and writers to meet and exchange ideas.
Questions?
For full information on the film competition visit our FilmFreeway page.
To talk to us, contact the Banff Mountain Film Competition at 403.762.6441 or banffmountainfilms@banffcentre.ca.
The 2024 Banff Mountain Film Competition is now closed.
For full information on the film competition visit our FilmFreeway page.
The 2025 film competition will open in April 2025.
After 48 years, the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival has a proven track record as one of the most prestigious and largest mountain culture festivals in the world. Located in the stunning Canadian Rocky Mountains, the Festival is a programming-driven, competitive event bringing together the best films and books on mountains and the spirit of adventure from around the world. The 2024 festival will be a combination of in-person theatre events and virtual online screenings.
The festival in Banff offers you the chance to meet other filmmakers and industry professionals to exchange ideas and collaborate in a highly creative and inspiring atmosphere. It’s also a great opportunity to connect with leaders in the outdoor adventure field, including climbers, mountaineers, gear manufacturers, potential sponsors, and journalists.
Film finalists are invited to join us at the Festival and as special guests, you will receive:
Films entered into competition will also be considered for inclusion in our World Tour programs that reach a global audience of over half a million people through screenings in approximately 50 countries. Short films are particularly popular for the programming flexibility they provide so if you are submitting a longer film, you may wish to also enter a shorter version in competition for both Festival and World Tour consideration (World Tour programs are typically 2 hours long and contain 5-9 mixed films). If your film is selected for the World Tour, our team will contact you to arrange a separate licensing agreement.
Grand Prize: $5,000
Best Film, Adventure: $3,000
Best Film, Climbing: $3,000
Best Film, Environment: $3,000
Best Film, Mountain Culture: $3,000
Best Film, Mountain Sports: $3,000
Best Film, Snow Sports: $3,000
Best Short Film: $3,000 - Under 20 minutes in length (including credits)
Best Feature Film: $3,000 - Over 70 minutes in length (including credits)
Creative Excellence: $3,000 - Awarded for showcasing creativity and the arts in exploring the spirit of adventure
Audience Choice Award: $3,000 - Chosen by the Festival audience
• Entries are not limited to one award.
• Awards may be presented to the director or the producer of the film.
• In the spirit of being a true Audience Choice award, votes are cast by virtual and in person festival ticket holders only. If person(s) in connection to your film are found to be sharing information on how to vote (via social media or otherwise), your film will be disqualified from receiving this award.
• Prize amounts listed are in Canadian dollars.
Winners will be announced during the film awards ceremony on Sunday, November 3rd, 2024. The jury reserves the right to not present an award, and its decisions will be final.
Pre-Screeners:
Filmmakers are required to submit their completed film for pre-screening at the time of entry via FilmFreeway. If you are using a secured link, keep your submission updated with any changes to passwords. If English is not the original language of the film, it MUST be entered into competition with burned-in English subtitles as part of the video image, or be dubbed in English. We recommend a sans-serif font with maximum readability against both light and dark backgrounds. Your FilmFreeway entry must remain active for viewing until November 3, 2024.
Finalist Masters:
If your film is selected as a finalist, you will be required to provide a high resolution master via Signiant Media Shuttle. We accept finalist masters as either Avid DNxHD or Apple ProRes 422 codecs at 1920x1080i/p in a .mov or .mxf wrapper and our preference is to use the 10bit codecs (example: ProRes 422 (HQ) or Avid DNxHD HQX). We request finalists to submit their master film with the frame rate that it was edited in, to a maximum of 30 frames per second. Audio should be uncompressed PCM, .wav or .aif at 24bit, 48kHz. If you’re also including 5.1 surround tracks, in addition to the stereo full mix, please include a track listing. Finalists will be contacted by the festival with instructions on how to upload.
Note: The Festival Producer will have the option to conform the content to broadcast-quality standardization or, alternatively, to charge a fee (in consultation with entrant) for Banff Centre in-house corrections in the event of substandard submission.
Accessibility:
If applicable, thoroughly check subtitles for quality (translation and typos) and readability. We recommend a sans-serif font using white text on a black background, and make sure the font size is accessible.
If selected as a finalist, we will request a caption file (SRT) and an audio descriptive track (if available). We strongly encourage you to include caption and audio description files as a standard piece of your post-production and have them ready to provide festivals.
Promotional Materials:
If your film is selected as a finalist, you will be asked to provide a variety of formats and sizes of images from the film to be reproduced, published and/or exhibited for promotional purposes as they pertain to the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, World Tour, and the associated Mountain Film Competition at the Banff. Details of requirements will be sent to film finalists.
Brian D. Johnson is a Canadian writer and filmmaker. An award-winning journalist, he’s known for his long-time role as film critic and senior arts writer at Maclean’s magazine, where he remains a Contributing Editor. As former President of the Toronto Film Critics Association, he created and produced the annual TFCA Awards Gala with its $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, the largest prize for Canadian cinema.
Johnson has made two short films, Tell Me Everything (2006) and Yesno (2010). He has also produced and directed two documentary features, which both premiered at TIFF, played festivals around the world, and went on to receive a nationally theatrical release and a CBC TV broadcast. Al Purdy Was Here (2015), the story of a Canadian legendary poet, played 70 screens across Canada. The Colour Of Ink (2022), which explores the magic of a primal medium, was shot in seven countries. Produced by Sphinx Productions and the National Film Board, it won various festival prizes and a Canadian Screen Award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary.
Born in England and raised in Toronto, Johnson has written for publications ranging from the Globe & Mail to Rolling Stone. He has worked as a broadcaster in radio and television and spent five years touring and recording full-time as a musician. He has hosted onstage interviews with authors, actors and filmmakers, notably One Night Only, an evening of conversation with Al Pacino at Toronto’s Massey Hall in 2013. He also has published a book of poetry, a novel and four non-fiction books, including a history of the Toronto International Film Festival, Brave Films, Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever.
Johnson lives in Toronto and is married to writer Marni Jackson.
Joaquin Gomez is a composer, sound designer and producer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started working in the audiovisual world at 15, creating soundtracks for documentaries, animations, video games, trailers, TV series, mapping and films. With both classical and contemporary formation, he blends sound design and music with modern techniques. His great passion for nature and outdoor sports led him to find his true north, combining his music with this amazing industry and creating ONA Sounds in 2015, a film scoring and sound design company. During 2020 with his brother Tomas, they created ONA Short Film Festival, an event that takes place in Venice, Italy.
Joaquín entered the Banff Centre for Arts And Creativity in the audio post-production and audio recording department as a practicum. He has presented several films during the festival and has collaborated as a jury as well. Definitely an experience that changed his life forever.
Some of his major works include the sound design for Game of Thrones, Harry Potter & Call of Duty video game trailers. He composed the soundtrack for Ruin & Rose, The River Runner, Champions of the Golden Valley, Wallmapu, The Time Within, The Traverse, Near the River, The Passage and Movements (which won the Chrystal Pine Award for best soundtrack). Since 2020 he is working for Disney Latin-America as a composer & sound designer for different projects.
Kasia Biernacka is an expedition caver and cave photographer. Her favorite destinations are North, Central and South America.
Kasia works as Film Programming Director for the Ladek Mountain Festival in Poland. She also translates outdoor films from English, French and Spanish into Polish, gives talks about her expeditions and does cave photography workshops.
Masha Gordon is an experienced board executive, an avid alpinist, and a mother-of two. She started her career as a journalist for the Washington Post in Moscow and spent the next two decades working in finance leading investment teams at Goldman Sachs and PIMCO. She moved to a portfolio career of non-executive board roles in 2014 and currently serves as a board chair of Constellation and a non-executive chair of Capricorn Energy. She is a founder of GRIT&ROCK, a foundation that supports female attainment in mountaineering through annual expedition grant program.
A passionate alpinist, Masha participated in over 30 expeditions and is a holder of two Guinness world records.
Shelma is a sucker for a good story. Whether it’s documenting cyclists of color in New York City, building a temporary community art park in the Lower East Side or highlighting underrepresented stories in the outdoors, she focuses on bringing people together and sharing their stories. She is the founder of Flash Foxy, a multi-media platform that celebrates women and genderqueer folks in climbing. Shelma's directorial debut, Do Better Together, was an official selection for several festivals, including but not limited to MountainFilm, Kendal Mountain Film Festival, No Mans Land Film Festival and Filmed by Bike Film Festival. Shelma recently completed her first featured length film, On The Land, which documents a skill swap between two women - one a hunter and the other a climber - over the course of two years and the community they find with one another.
The current Vice President of the Access Fund Board of Directors, Shelma was named one of 40 women who’ve made the biggest impact in the outdoor world by Outside Magazine in 2017 as well as listed on the 30 Most Powerful Women in Travel List by Conde Nast Traveler in 2019. A leader in our community, she has written, spoken and presented on the importance of creating a climbing community that reflects and welcomes everyone who identifies as a climber. Shelma currently splits her time between Brooklyn, NY and the Eastern Sierra, CA and can often be found plugging widgets into horizontal cracks at the Gunks or getting scared on granite highballs in Bishop.