Canadian Film Festival Winds Up Japan Tour in Toyama Prefecture

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:38 JST, December 4, 2024

ASAHI, Toyama — The Japan tour of Canada’s Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival drew to a close in Asahi, Toyama Prefecture, on Nov. 16.

The tour, which stopped in five municipalities across the country, is an annual event for the town of Asahi and features films of people confronting the great outdoors.

The festival started in Canada in 1976 as a way to entertain climbers and skiers between the mountain climbing season in summer and the skiing season in winter. The nine-day festival takes place at Banff National Park every November. The world tour stops in more than 40 countries and sees more than 500,000 people attend.

The festival in Canada shows about 50 films selected from more than 300 works by mountaineers and filmmakers from across the globe. The Japan tour, which started in Tokyo in 2004, shows more than 10 films chosen by the festival’s organizing committee in Japan. In addition to Tokyo and Asahi, the tour also stops in the prefectures of Fukuoka, Osaka and Hokkaido.

It was the eighth time Asahi held the event. The town got on the tour thanks to Yuichi Uehara, 50, who works at the town’s festival venue, Azalea Hall. An ardent skier and mountain climber, Uehara belongs to a council that deals with alpine accidents near Mt. Asahidake. More than 10 years ago, he took part in the festival’s Japan tour in the Tokyo area and was impressed. He asked the organizing committee to hold the event at Azalea Hall, too, saying he wanted his friends and colleagues in Toyama Prefecture to see the tour.

It took two years for his proposal to be realized as it went through screening by the festival’s headquarters in Canada. To drive up excitement about the venue, Uehara asked climbing gear shops around the country to join the event. This made Asahi the only stop on the Japan tour with so many shop booths. On Nov. 16, people were browsing outdoor gear at the booths between screenings.

Fifteen films from the United States, Switzerland, France and other countries were shown during the festival in Asahi this year.

In the audience at the film’s screening was Yuki Yamaguchi, 16, a second-year student at Toyama Kogyo engineering high school who came to the festival with fellow members of the school’s mountaineering club.

“Seeing how the people in the film live, it makes me think about my life. Now I want to live in a way where I take on new challenges,” Yamaguchi said.