Graz mountain film festival marks 40 years with 79 films
Wednesday 21st October 2026 on 21:45 in
Austria
The 40th Mountainfilm Festival in Graz will screen 79 films selected from 270 submissions from 32 countries, ORF Steiermark reports. The festival runs from November 17 to 21 at the Congress venue and Schubertkino cinema, with films from Japan returning after a long absence and entries also coming from Albania and Turkey.
The festival, founded in 1986, will also hold anniversary screenings on November 10 and 11 at Rechbauerkino cinema. The programme will revisit selected winning films from four decades of the event. Organiser Robert Schauer said the festival had screened several thousand films and welcomed tens of thousands of visitors over the years.
The competition includes 16 films in the mountaineering and expeditions category. One is Austrian premiere “Simon Messner – Out of the Shadow” by Veronika Kaserer, a personal portrait of the mountaineer and son of Reinhold Messner. Simon Messner will not attend the festival.
The sport in mountain and natural environments category features 19 films, including “The Dawn Wall by Your Side” about French climbers Seb Berthe and Soline Kentzel, who also directed the film. Schauer described the pair as an exceptional climbing partnership; they also undertake night climbs in Yosemite National Park.
The nature and environment category includes 34 films, among them French director Vincent Munier’s “The Whisper of the Forests”. The film features wildlife footage recorded over three years in the Vosges, after the crew waited patiently for the animals to appear.
A dozen films will screen in the people and cultures category. They include Austrian filmmaker Wolfgang Tonninger’s “Mountain Thinking: An Essay on the Elemental”, which explores small details and the idea of romanticism in nature, and Graz filmmaker David Immanuel Rauchenberger’s documentary “The Kogi: An Indigenous Tribe from the Heart of the World”.
The special programme looks back at landmark achievements in the Alps. Tom Dauer’s “Nanga Parbat – Echoes of Sisyphus” follows David Göttler’s repeated attempts to climb the mountain. Göttler and Dauer will take part in a stage discussion on November 19 at the Congress venue. Patrick Centurioni’s ORF film “Steep World: Between Abyss and Refuge” will have its world premiere on November 20.
The programme will also honour British filmmaker Leo Dickinson, 80, and mountaineering guide Leo Schlömmer, who turns 90. Dickinson and his wife, Mandy, will attend a November 19 screening of a portrait of German filmmaker Werner Bertolan. Schlömmer, an army mountain guide, was among the first Styrians to climb in Yosemite and took part in expeditions to some of the world’s highest peaks.
The festival closes on November 21 with its awards ceremony and the traditional “Long Night of Mountain Films”. Günther Schilhan’s “That Gives Me Mountains! 40 Years of Mountainfilm Graz” will be screened free of charge. The budget is below 400,000 euros, compared with about 350,000 euros in 2025. Ticket prices are unchanged except for special events.