With 96 films screening across six different categories—adventure, climbing, environmental, mountain culture, mountain sports, and ski—any one of the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival’s eight days will prove to be an adventure.

Here are some of our picks:

Tupendeo

(Switzerland)

Robert Steiner’s artful 26-minute film bridges the extremes of climbing through two separate stories about the same mountain. A Swiss team derives near-holy inspiration from the unascended peak of the title; an earlier attempt is blown apart by Touching the Void–like horrors. Screening with two other shorts, it’s a perfect opener to the fest.

Centennial Theatre, February 10 (7:30 p.m.)

Wild Ones

(Canada) 

Musician Pierson Ross ditches the tour van for a canoe, playing private homes along a 750 km stretch of water from Georgian Bay to Ottawa in order to promote the album of the title. Frequently naked and even more frequently covered in mosquitoes, Ross is an example to anyone who thinks their commute is tough. His Nick Drake/Bon Iver-ish tunes help take the edge off.

Cinematheque, February 11 (2 p.m.) 

To the Ends of the Earth

(Canada)

“It’s not your grandfather’s oil industry anymore,” says peak-oil prophet Richard Heinberg, one of the many experts reminding us here that “extreme” energy extraction (fracking, tarsands) can only end in environmental and economic holocaust. David Lavalee’s film doesn’t shy away from the politics (“While Baghdad burns, Calgary booms,” says narrator Emma Thompson), and the doc is clear and pointed enough that it might penetrate a few of the more stubborn reality bubbles out there—maybe.

Cinematheque, February 11 (7:30 p.m.) 

Full Moon

(Canada)

Director Leanne Pelosi focuses on a phenomenally skilled, multigenerational cadre of women snowboarders who can easily compete with and maybe even outjock the boys. There are nuclear wedgies, nude backcountry dares, and the kind of cathartically tasteless humour that naturally follows when you leap directly from a helicopter into an avalanche and still come up breathing. Need we add that the footage is beyond spectacular?

Rio Theatre, February 12 (2 p.m.)

Pura Vida

(Austria)

He doesn’t encounter any Vancouver drivers, mercifully, but Hervé Neukomm does run into pirates, drug smugglers, anacondas, and an apocalyptic Atlantic tidal wave as he cycles—yes, cycles—the length of the Amazon in a converted boat. An ayahuasca trip and some helpful (and possibly supernatural) pink dolphins help to relieve the insane stress of his years-long journey, all of it captured to breathtaking effect by filmmaker Thomas Miklautsch.

Rio Theatre, February 17 (7:30 p.m.)