You know what you’re getting when you buy a ticket to the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It’s a reliably dizzying hit of alpine heroics, deep powder, and people making deeply questionable life choices. (If this seems familiar, I’m guessing you read my ‘Red’ Review – well done you!) On the Blue side of the mountain, the programming is a mixed bag of tight editing and sprawling vanity projects. It’s a lineup that swings between raw vulnerability and oddly superficial travelogues.
That said, I reviewed the 2026 Banff offerings via screener, and both George and Best Day Ever were missing from the package. Those, you will have to form your own opinions on after viewing in person.
The heavy hitter here is Kai Jones: Falling Into Place, co-directed by Todd Jones and Clayton Vila. Documenting the 16-year-old freeskiing sensation’s brutal recovery from a near-fatal Wyoming backcountry injury, it delivers a strong narrative populated by folks you actually want to invest in. It’s a solidly constructed piece of work. The contrast between the invincible teenager we meet pre-injury and the abruptly evolved young man who survives multiple surgeries and life-threatening anaemia is stark and well-handled.
The music stays well-integrated into the drama rather than hijacking it into a music video. Its main flaw is simply running out of road. By the time the 15-month recovery window closes on film, Jones is still in the messy middle of his journey. We don’t really get a complete thesis on what his future looks like.
The contrast between the invincible teenager we meet pre-injury and the abruptly evolved young man who survives multiple surgeries and life-threatening anemia is stark and well-handled.
Alexi Godbout’s Cold Calls: Japan is exactly how you execute a short-form ski edit. At just six minutes, it’s a brilliantly cut burst of limb-risking wintry hijinks in Hokkaido. There’s minimal spoken-word; instead, a mix of voicemails and droll text messages ties the narrative together brilliantly. It’s exactly the right length, deploying a cracking mix of third-person and POV footage to hammer home the sheer, uncomplicated fun Godbout and his fellow Canadian freeriders (Emma Patterson, Jacob Bélanger, and Alex Armstrong) are having.
Rush Sturges and Skip Armstrong’s A Baffin Vacation: Love on Ice is a pity, squandering some genuine early promise. The start of Erik Boomer and Sarah McNair-Landry’s 69-day expedition is thrilling enough, full of kite-skiing and sarcastic declarations of ‘having fun’ in miserable conditions. But once the wind dies and it becomes a manual slog across punishing terrain, the film loses its grip. There is too much music and virtually no sense of space, time, or the crushing isolation of the Baffin Island coastline.
Alexi Godbout’s Cold Calls: Japan is exactly how you execute a short-form ski edit. At just six minutes, it’s a brilliantly cut burst of limb-risking wintry hijinks in Hokkaido.
The drone footage is well-framed but never visceral. It ends up feeling incredibly impersonal. We never spend enough quiet time with the couple to understand what the slog is costing them mentally. Because of this, the mid-expedition marriage proposal lands like a tacked-on afterthought filmed for the socials.
To round things off, Max Weston’s The Hive Architect follows conservationist Matt Somerville as he builds log habitats for wild bees. It’s a very sweet, gentle mini-documentary, and Somerville is a thoroughly affable guy with a mission you can easily get behind. That said, it sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the alpine sufferfests of a Banff lineup. It’s also a beat too long for such a simple premise.
Overall, what I saw of the Blue Programme was as visually impressive as regular viewers will have come to expect of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It may not be the strongest or most memorable in the history of the world tour, but there’s plenty to enjoy all the same.
Featured Image: Kai Jones’ Falling Into Place (Tour Edit) – Screenshot
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