Following on from the climbing film premieres of the recent months, including Reel Rock 13, Dawn Wall, and Free Solo, I was eager to continue experiencing captivating narratives and adrenaline-inducing footage. With Kendal Mountain Festival making a stop in Oxford as part of its UK tour, I was able to get lost amongst plains in the Midwestern US, the chilling waves of Lake Superior, the nearby Lake District, and the far-away Kangchenjunga. Now in its thirty-ninth year, this highly-regarded festival selects the best new adventure films to tour to down-jacket-clad audiences outside of Kendal.

Film Director Steve Scott served as the evening’s host, giving us context before each short film, and introducing guest speaker Ben Saunders. The inclusion of a talk in the middle of the screenings set this festival tour apart from other adventure events I’ve attended, where the focus is either the speaker or the screen; this evening provided a good balance of both.

Polar explorer and endurance athlete Saunders was a natural storyteller, recalling how during his two-decade-long gap year he has become the only Briton to ski to both the North and South Poles. I particularly enjoyed his ability to illustrate his adventures in a relatable way, describing how the white-out conditions of Antarctica are like being in a freezer on a treadmill, and how one of the routes he took to the South Pole was the equivalent of nearly seventy marathons. Saunders also conveyed the extreme circumstances of historical and contemporary polar expeditions with specific details: how there were no zippers at the beginning of the last century when Scott and Shackleton attempted record-breaking feats, and how he cut off tags from his clothing and sawed the end from his toothbrush to lighten the load.

My favourite element of Saunders’ talk was his sense of humour, both in asides during his stories and situational humour. For example, after poking fun at having ‘polar explorer’ as his job title, he questioned the person who made an odder career choice in weighing polar bears for a living. Also, he related how, upon reaching the North Pole and making several phone calls, only his mother answered and insisted on calling another time because she was at the grocery store checkout. Saunders closed by hinting at an incipient return journey to the polar regions, so we will have to stay tuned to see where he heads next.

I appreciated the diverse selection of award-winning films, featuring different protagonists - from a skilled male-female alpinist pair, to a Salomon-sponsored distance runner, to a ‘regular guy’ living on the shores of Lake Superior with a van full of surf boards. Some films, like Every Single Street and Chasing the Frog, were goal-driven; Ski Photographer, Chasing Monsters, and We are Send focused on highlighting unique footage; La Congenialita delved into the intricacies of a climbing partnership, and Surfer Dan explored a surfer’s relationship with frigid and healing waves. The most noteworthy was AMA, which Scott introduced as a film that fuses genres and erodes the boundaries of typical outdoor content. Underwater filmmaker Julie Gautier performed a stunning and mesmerizing dance in a deep pool, paying homage to her dancer mother and spear fisherman father. Despite not being the fast-paced content one would expect at an adventure film festival, AMA highlighted our relationship to nature and the elements, and how there is beauty in pushing boundaries and going to extremes.

Another theme that emerged from the collection of films was that adventure does not necessarily have to be perilous to be rewarding, and this made some of the characters more relatable. Rickey Gates, who grew up feeling comfortable in the mountains, tasked himself with running every street in San Francisco over a few weeks. Along the way he had chance meetings and there emerged a social commentary of living conditions in this city. The bustling urban environment, so different from solitude of his youth, was challenging for him, but he stayed on task, immersing himself in the smells and sounds of the Bay Area.

One of the highlights of this adventure film festival is that in three hours I got to experience stories and footage that spanned the spectrum of otherworldly and relatable. There are summits and white water rapids I may never visit, but still got the chance to appreciate in almost full force, and this was balanced by content that excited me to pursue future adventures.

The Kendal Mountain Festival is now heading north to Scotland before completing the UK tour in Kendal on 6 June. For those wanting more award-winning adventure films in the near future, the Banff Mountain Film Festival is at Oxford’s New Theatre on 21 May.