Mountainfilm unveils first slate of 2026 world premieres, with climbing roots front and center

The Telluride documentary festival’s 48th edition (May 21–25) will debut nine features — including a Tom Frost portrait, a Walsh Glacier expedition, and a wildfire aftermath — with more titles still to come.

Mountainfilm has announced the first batch of world premieres for its 2026 edition, a nine-feature slate that leans hard into the climbing and mountaineering DNA the Telluride festival was built on — and pairs it with a clutch of documentaries about communities buckling under environmental and economic strain.

The 48th annual festival runs May 21–25 over Memorial Day weekend in Telluride. It remains an Academy Award–qualifying festival in the documentary short film category, and organizers say more than 20 short films will also debut alongside the features.

“This year’s lineup of premieres is phenomenal,” festival director Crystal Merrill said in the announcement, framing the slate as wide-ranging enough that the only real risk is missing it.

A return to the festival’s climbing roots

Mountainfilm started in 1979 as a climbing and mountaineering festival, and three of the announced premieres are pitched as a deliberate nod to that history. Frost: The Story of a Lifetime, directed by Tom Seawell, profiles Yosemite big-wall pioneer Tom Frost and the clean-climbing movement he helped lead. The film came out of Mountainfilm’s own Commitment Grant program, which seeds projects the festival expects to eventually screen.

In The Lost Cache, brothers Todd and Steve Jones follow a team of skiers and scientists onto the Walsh Glacier to recover photography gear left behind by mountaineer Bradford Washburn in 1937. And Strength to Weight, from director Jon Glassberg, follows elite climber Ethan Pringle as he steps away from the wall to care for his father after a stroke — a film about climbing that mostly isn’t about climbing.

Communities under pressure

Three more features sit at what the festival calls the crossroads of people, nature, and place. burn, scar, directed by Hillary Bachelder, looks at a Western community trying to rebuild after a catastrophic wildfire and the U.S. Forest Service’s parallel effort to resume stewardship of the burn area.

Captured, from Katie Schuler and Nick Rogacki, traces an unlikely partnership between two women working to expose the staged-wildlife photography industry and the animals caught up in it. And Papertown, directed by Jeremy Seifert and Benjamin James Roberts, drops into a town gutted by the closure of its paper mill — the region’s biggest employer. Like Frost, Papertown is a Commitment Grant alum.

Shorts to watch

The shorts program will include adventure entries like Bravo Les Filles (Well Done Ladies), which follows two women climbers in Madagascar, and Good Luck, Kid, from Mountainfilm alum Renan Ozturk, on a 2,500-mile Alaskan expedition with Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell. Rock Faced It All profiles Teresa Bennett, who took up climbing at 64 after a Parkinson’s diagnosis, and Gladice, from David Garrett Byars, is an animated piece centered on a sentient glacier convinced it’s dying.

Profile-driven shorts include Run In Beauty, on Diné runner Alexandria Staten reconnecting with her culture; InVINCEble, from longtime Telluride filmmakers Beth and George Gage, on USC basketball player Vince Iwuchukwu; Rainbow Rider, on lesbian trucker Shelle Lichti and her unmistakable rainbow rig; and American River, which follows three formerly incarcerated men down a river in search of something like freedom.

Q&As with filmmakers and subjects will follow screenings, in keeping with festival tradition.

What’s next

The festival says additional world premiere features will be announced alongside the full lineup in early May. Passes for the 2026 festival are on sale now.

If You Go

What: Mountainfilm 2026, the festival’s 48th edition

When: May 21–25, 2026 (Memorial Day weekend)

Where: Telluride, Colorado

Tickets and info: mountainfilm.org

Source: Mountainfilm press release, April 23, 2026