[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Pakistan International Mountain Film Festival aims to drive tourism to the beautiful lands, spacious valleys and peaceful surroundings.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Pakistan International Mountain Film Festival 2016 inspired audiences with an exhilarating and challenging collection of films that explore the mountain world, highlight new landscapes and remote cultures.
Second Pakistan International Mountain Film Festival concluded with an award ceremony at Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) in Islamabad.
The two-day festival was organized by PNCA in collaboration with Eyebex Films. Sixteen long and short films were screened on the first day and twelve on the second day of the festival.
Second Pakistan International Mountain Film Festival aims to drive tourism to the beautiful lands, spacious valleys and peaceful surroundings. Chairman of Pakistan International Mountains Film Festival (PIMFF) Wajahat Malik & co-founder Maryam Cheema highlighted that the aim of the festival is to give voices to people from the mountains and to the region.
Minister of State for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb attended the inaugural ceremony of the event. She noted that the film festival would not only project the positive image of Pakistan but also to apprise national and international tourists of country’s beauty. For the revival of film industry healthy entertainment, she said, youth should come forward and make films with new ideas. It was the collective responsibility of all to work for the promotion of country’s culture and today’s event was quite important in that regard, she added.
On the final day of the event, best films of the festival were selected and awarded in five categories. The Jury comprised of veteran artist and Director General PNCA, Jamal Shah and film star Faisal Rehman.
Award winning Films
- Best Film: JUREK
- Best Film Culture & Environment: TASHI & THE MONK
- Best Film Fiction: SHAH
- Audience Award: VALLEY UPRISING
- Best Pakistani Documentary Film: PANGOLINS IN PERIL
DG PNCA Jamal Shah lauded the efforts of the festival team and announced to start Islamabad Film festival in the coming year. He also informed that efforts are being made to initiate Film Academy in capital.
The festival ended with Kalash dance performance by National Performing Art Group.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]

[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Overview of the Films screened at the Festival
Quest for Inspiration
(52 minutes Documentary | France)
The Quest for Inspiration is an immersion into the world of landscape photographer Alexandre Deschaumes. The artist portrays his world of landscapes with a dreamlike artistic vision.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Secret of Kyrgyzstan
(10 minutes Documentary | Italy)
This Documentary is about the indigenous lifestyles of tribal people living in Gabral Valley of Hindukush mountains.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Save the Bees
(2 minutes Animation | USA)
Bees are killed by GMO everyday. Without them humans have just four years left to survive. This animation shows how bees are important for our environment.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Lazawal
(15 minutes Fiction | Pakistan)
A man’s quest to find his brother, who went missing and later pronounced dead while climbing Nanga Parbat.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Aspiration of the Pamirs
(52 minutes Documentary | France)
Three friends want to show the viability of an ambitious bike concept, designed by young French craftsmen.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Beyond the Heights
(49 minutes Documentary | Pakistan)
A documentary about a young Pakistani Mountaineer Samina Baig,who became first Pakistani woman to summit Mount Everest at the age of 21.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Every time you tell a story
(52 minutes Documentary | India)
How do you tell a story when its words are a song, a stone, an image or a symbol? A story that is woven into a shawl, woven through time itself!
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Life in Smoke
(8 minutes Animation | Italy)
“Life in Smoke” is a short-film against active and passive smoking.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Pangolins in Peril- Story of Rare Scales
(15 minutes Documentary | Pakistan)
The Scaly Anteater or Pangolin is a little known secretive animal that is being hunted to extinction for its scales in Pakistan.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
In the Lap of Ganga
(20 minutes Fiction | India)
This is a story about poor family comprising-two brothers and a father (a poor rickshaw puller) and their mother. Marred by poverty, both are left with no option but to earn their livelihood by begging on the ghats of Varanasi.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Paradise Melting
(34 minutes Documentary | Pakistan)
A Short-film by Fulcrum Films set in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Tashi and The Monk
(40 minutes Documentary | India)
A man creates a children’s community based on the principles of love, compassion, and struggles with the dark forces unleashed in the process.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Nanga Dreams
(25 minutes Documentary | Poland)
The quintessence of real adventure… against the system and strict rules… with real faith in success, the team “Nanga Dream” tries winter after winter for getting higher and higher on Nanga Parbat.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
TOM
(67 minutes Documentary | Italy)
“Since I was 10 all I wanted to do was to climb. Even before I was born I climbed the North Face of the Eiger. So I think it’s not much a surprise what I do now”. Tom Ballard, alpinist.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Jurek
(72 minutes Documentary | Poland)
The life and accomplishments of climber Jerzy Kukuczka.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Panorama
(30 minutes Documentary | Spain)
In July 2014, Edu Marín took on the most challenging project of his life: climbing “Panaroma”, the legendary route freed by Alex Huber in 2007, with his 62 year-old father, Francisco Marín “Novato”.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Doya
(16 minutes Documentary | Pakistan)
Doya is a film is about religious music rituals of a specific group of people of Parachinar. The film documents the scared rituals that have developed along with the unique music culture of that region.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Resuns
(52 minutes Documentary | Switzerland)
Resuns, which means “echoes”, explores the diversity, sound and melody of Romansh, one of Switzerland’s four official languages.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Across Antarctica
(30 minutes Documentary | France)
Stéphanie Gicquel (French woman) skied across Antarctica through the South Pole, with two other polar explorers, including her husband Jérémie. An expedition she had imagined, planned and prepared for three years.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Cast Away Man
(82 minutes Documentary | Nepal)
Dor Bahadur Bista, Nepal’s most controversial intellectuals in modern times, disappeared without trace in 1996. He became an anthropologist by assisting well-known anthropologist Fuerer-Haimendorf, but was largely self-trained.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Mermaid of Churna Island
(21 minutes Documentary | Pakistan)
This is the story of Rosheen Khan, Pakistan’s first and only female SCUBA diving instructor, who overcame many hurdles in her young life to arrive where she is now.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Norma’s Story
(5 minutes Animation | Canada)
Norma’s Story is a true tale of change. It documents the effects of climate change on the environment, culture and food security of the Vuntut Gwitchin people of the Northern Yukon as seen through the eyes of Norma Kassi.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Lyari Notes
(69 minutes Documentary | Pakistan)
The film follows four young girls that routinely travel from Lyari to a musical school in another area. The travel is long and dangerous, plus the girls’ families are not always supportive of their desire to learn music as they feel that it violates Islamic law.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
First Day of Summer
(5 minutes Documentary | UK)
Arriving on the first day of summer, a national holiday in Iceland, Pete Coombs and his small group of split-boarding friends head north and back into winter.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Shah
(109 minutes Fiction | Pakistan)
The film is based on the journey of Pakistani Olympian boxer Hussain Shah, who started his life on the streets of Lyari, Karachi, as a homeless child and went on to dominate Asian boxing for nearly a decade. He became the only boxer of Pakistan history to win an Olympic medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics but became another unsung hero of Pakistan.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Valley Uprising
(97 minutes Documentary | USA)
Generations of beatniks and madmen drop out of society and took up a life of rock climbing on the massive granite walls of Yosemite National Park.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Baltoro
(20 minutes Documentary | Australia)
Moving my body upon the Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram Mountains became one of those dreams. I fly in from a pressurized, mediated, visa-controlled world, another privileged foreigner. The altitude became an important factor in how the dream played out.
[dt_gap height=”10″ /]
Tibetan Dreams
(44 minutes Documentary | Austria)
Inspired by the records of the Japanese alpinist and explorer Tomatsu Nakamura, they organize an expedition to East Tibet, in October 2015, in order to explore the unknown Gangga Massif and to climb untouched summits.