The annual Banff Mountain Film Festival UK & Ireland tour kicks off this week, with more screenings and action than ever before.

Featuring 14 films over two different programmes of thrilling climbing and adventure films, the tour starts in Brighton on Wednesday 25 January and finishes in Pembrokeshire on 17 May, with nearly 100 screenings at over 50 venues along the way.

The short films are selected from hundreds of films entered into the prestigious Banff Mountain Film Festival held every November in the Canadian Rockies. The UK & Ireland tour is part of the wider Banff world tour, which travels the globe each year, visiting nearly 50 countries and reaching more than 400,000 people worldwide.

FILMS

A total of 14 films will be shown on the 2017 film tour over the Red and Blue film programmes. Some of the films featuring on this year’s tour include:

DOING IT SCARED

Paul Pritchard was one of the leading climbers and mountaineers of the 1980s and 1990s, renowned for his hard and extremely bold first ascents. In 1998 Paul was abseiling in to climb the Totem Pole in Tasmania when his rope dislodged a rock that hit him on the head.

The aftermath of the accident left him with hemiplegia, which means he has little feeling or movement in the right side of this body. Despite this disability, Paul has continued to live a life filled with adventure, and 18 years later he returns to the Totem Pole to find out if he has recovered enough to finish the climb.

YOUNG GUNS

Young Guns features two of the most exciting and promising young climbers of today, 15-year-old Ashima Shiraishi and 16-year-old Kai Lightner. The film takes them to Norway’s stunning coastline, where the legendary Hanshelleren cave, a sprawling granite cathedral that’s one of the largest caves in Europe, pushes them out of their comfort zones, with 260ft of overhanging climbing capped by a 160ft headwall. Ashima then travels to Japan, to Mt Hiei on the southern island of Kyushu, to attempt to climb a massive granite boulder via a fierce 30-move boulder problem called Horizons. In an epic setting, if she succeeds she will become the first woman, and youngest person, to climb the cutting-edge grade of V15...

FLEDGLINGS

As longtime professional climbers who eat, sleep and live the sport, Cedar Wright and Matt Segal are used to being competent, comfortable and at the top of their game. When they take up paragliding, however, things are different. Tree landings and sketchy moments as bumbling, gung-ho beginners become the new normal. With only six months of flying under their belts, the pair embark on an audacious objective: to climb and fly off Orizaba, the highest peak in Mexico. What ensues is a lesson in jumping into the deep end…

Other highlights include skiing the steepest lines in the Alps, rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, wingsuit flying and speed riding in Chamonix, mountain biking in Scotland and more.

Each show will also feature the tour’s legendary prize giveaways during the interval, with goodies up for grabs from sponsors including Keen, Cotswold Outdoors, Osprey Buff, Clif Bar, Joby, Stanley, SueMe and Artemis.

For tickets, venues and to see a full line-up of this year’s films, go to www.banff-uk.com.

TOUR DATES AND LOCATIONS

The UK and Ireland 2017 tour dates are: