By Fischer Genau DIGITAL MEDIA LEAD
The Lone Peak Film Festival announced this year’s slate of films on Friday morning, a lineup that features Montana-based stories, Indigenous films, and international features. An assortment of 20 feature-length stories and short films will screen over the weekend of Sept. 17-20 at The Waypoint in Big Sky for the festival’s second year.
The festival’s selections fit into four main categories: Montana stories, Indigenous stories, conservation stories and stories of human resilience. LPFF cofounder and Emmy-winning filmmaker Daniel Glick said the selection committee also looked for films that are “ultimately uplifting, focusing on the good in humanity.” Lucia Ortega Calelo, LPFF’s director of programming, led the selection committee; she, Glick and a group of volunteers reviewed hundreds of films.
“We wanted to find a good balance of those four pillars of storytelling, and also just present the best films we could find, and we have a pretty outstanding group of films this year,” Glick told EBS.
A filmmaker from almost every film featured will be at the festival to answer questions after each screening.
After the welcome ceremony at Len Hill Park, led by Indigenous people, the festival will begin with a screening of Daughters of the Forest. The documentary centers on two Indigenous mycologists foraging for mushrooms in the mountains of Mexico, and it’s already won several awards including the Visions Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival in Austin, Texas. LPFF’s website describes it as “immersive sci-fi.”
“Daughters of the Forest is pretty astounding,” Glick said. “It’s a conservation story, an Indigenous story, a story of resilience, and it’s just absolutely gorgeous.”
Keep reading for the full Lone Peak Film Festival lineup.
This year’s lineup
Friday night will begin with a collection of shorts revolving around adventure. “Ninety One” is skiing documentary about a young man who set out to ski all 91 lines in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range and, in the process, began processing his deeply traumatic past. “Borrowed from the Earth,” which won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, centers on the connection between the Blackfeet people in Browning, Montana and their horses. “Sailing Above the Clouds” tells the story of 94-year-old Scally O’Donnell and his quest to keep his grandfather’s vision of the highest yacht club in the world alive in the Rocky Mountains. Finally, “Ryan Zahn,” chronicles a disabled young man’s journey with flat-track motorcycle racing.
Friday night’s feature is the narrative film “Their Town,” an intimate story about a high school girl wandering her town for a night of personal exploration and unexpected friendship. “It is just deeply moving, the acting is just off the charts,” Glick said of the film.
Saturday morning begins with “Veo Sin Ojos,” a documentary about a blind mountaineer who vows to climb Mount Everest. That film is directed by Bradford Schmidt, one of the first employee’s at GoPro, and the screening will be followed by a panel with Schmidt discussing the beginnings of the iconic company.
The day will continue with a collection of short films on “everyday heroes,” including “Sense of Emergency,” a story about a veteran paramedic that must face his own PTSD that blurs the lines between narrative and nonfiction, and “You Tryna Say You Love Me?”, a narrative about a freshman athlete trying to articulate his feelings after losing his mother and suffering an injury. Also in that block are “Living with a Visionary,” an imaginative animated short about a marriage to an art curator grappling with Parkinson’s, and “Sallie’s Ashes,” a documentary about an activist who refuses to retire after discovering millions of toxic coal ash threatening Mobile Bay in Alabama.
“Tiwahe,” a feature-length documentary about love, grief, and joy across four generations of Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribemembers in Hays, Montana on the Fort Belknap Reservation, will play on Saturday afternoon.
That night will conclude with “The Ascent,” the true story of a Colorado Springs bilateral-amputee climber’s attempt to crawl to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. This film won the Audience Award at the South by Southwest film festival, and both its directors will be in Big Sky for a Q&A.
LPFF’s final day will begin with a block of Montana-based short films. “Lighthouse Ranch” centers on mental health in Gallatin County, following a Big Sky teen through a personal crisis and her long road to recovery. “Are You Native?” tells the story of Shauna White Bear, her struggle with identity, and the grief of losing her father through videos she took as a child on her family camcorder. “Paving the Way” is a short documentary about a young skater and artist on the Flathead Indian Reservation and the ability of skateboarding to foster creativity and build community. “Pronghorn Passage” is another local film, set in southwest Montana, that explores the relationship between ranchers, wildlife, and fences crisscrossing the landscape through the migratory routes of pronghorn. Finally, “Cheyenne Creation Story” tells the ancient tale of the Creator bringing the universe into existence, narrated entirely in the Cheyenne language with English subtitles.
Sunday continues with “The Fisherman,” Ghana’s submission for international film at the prestigious Venice Film Festival this year, which follows a traditional Ghanaian fisherment who teams up with a sarcastic talking fish to navigate the modern world. “It made me laugh out loud, which doesn’t happen a lot,” Glick said of the film. “And it made me cry.”
The festival concludes with “Snow Leopard Sisters,” a documentary from Nepal that tells the story of a a friendship between two Indigenous women living in one of the most isolated corners of the Himalayas as they travel into the mountains seeking the last remaining endangered snow leopards.
Glick said that he could go down the list of films and give an equally strong pitch for all of them. He’s excited to see how the community responds to the festival’s second year.
“I hope that people, more than anything, come away feeling positive and feeling connected to other people,” Glick said. “We want this festival to build community in Big Sky and the Gallatin Valley.”
Three-day festival passes are available for purchase now on LPFF’s website, and tickets to individual screenings will go on sale Aug. 20.
