African Odyssey (2005)
Four youngsters from New Zealand motorcycle from Cape Town to London. Armed with no motorcycle experience and a borrowed camera, four friends from small-town Whakatane, New Zealand, decided to screw the job, the good advice and stories about Africa and set off on the adventure of a life time – crossing the length of the [...]
Alone Across Australia (2001)
A film so startling in its concept and perfect in its execution, that you will spend the weeks after viewing, assuming it was all a dream. Australian Jon Muir is one of the world’s leading adventure legends and rightly so. Today, at 56 years old, he is still going strong and is the star attraction [...]
Building the Alcan Highway (1947)
Full colour US Army Corps of Engineers uncut, uncensored, bulldozer action. Prepare to faint at the quality of improvised timber bridges in this film! Often cited as one of the ten most essential road-trips of all time, the Alcan Highway, from Dawson Creek BC to Delta Junction AK, has gone into overland travel folklore. Even [...]
Janapar (2011)
Janapar, the Armenian word for ‘journey’. Around-the-world cycling fused with a touching tale of love in wild and wonderful places. Tom Allen, set off on the get-away-from-it-all trip of a lifetime. Young, naïve and consequently, oozing adventure travel oils from every pore. The purity and perfection of long distance cycling has never been in doubt [...]
Ocean Ambition (2012)
A young Irishman attempts to become part of a world-record winning team rowing across the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco to Barbados. Ocean rowing is a growing sport in which specialised boats are used to row across open oceans. The sport is as much psychological as it is physical – ocean rowers have to endure months [...]
One Crazy Ride (2008)
More seat-of-your-pants unfeasibly-overloaded Royal Enfield high-altitude Himalayan madness from Gaurav Jani, one of the legends of the genre. There is an unwritten credo at the festival that ‘anyone can do this’ and we work hard to promote that notion. However, every now and then someone comes along to contradict that premise. Gaurav Jani is not [...]
Sea of Sand (1972)
Australian travel legends Mal and Mike Leyland give us a crackerjack billabong desert adventure. The vintage films at this festival are popular not simply because of deep saturated colours inherent in the Kodachrome 16mm film saturation process but for another reason altogether. The older films were always made by people who had no concept of [...]
The Boy Who Flies (2013)
In a country where no one flies, two friends can inspire a nation by putting everything on the line. Following a dream, Canadian paraglider pilot Benjamin Jordan travels to Malawi to teach children the joys of kite flying. There he meets Godfrey, a young man who has always dreamt of flying through has never had [...]
The Bus (2012)
A break from the high adventure for just a moment… A celebration of the VW camper van and its quietly understated role in getting tens of thousands of people ‘out there’. There are loads of four wheeled vehicles that exude the musky smell of iconography; from James Bond’s Aston Martin to David Hasselhof’s smugly metrosexual [...]
The Omidvar Brothers (1954-64)
The UK and US premiere of an impossibly rare, yet superb collection of vintage colour Iranian travel documentaries. In 1954 Issa and Abdullah Omidvar were in their twenties and growing restless in the suburbs of Tehran. In that golden age before Iran de-selected itself from the high table of western nations it was still possible [...]
Trabant Across Africa (2010)
“Because they told us it wasn’t possible. We couldn’t stand listening to it anymore. A continent that has been written off, in a car that has been written off. We had to prove that there is always hope.” A quiet dispute bubbles away in the buried corners of certain forums and chat rooms: Is it [...]
We Like Short Shorts
Four short films that all capture the very essence of anything that calls itself an Adventure Travel Film Festival. Pedal, Paddle and Push (2011) Six buddies tackle Alaska’s ‘Lost Coast’. How? The clue’s in the name… Their 225 mile trip isn’t a six-month expedition but in a short time they work very, very hard and [...]
White Silk Road (2012)
Afghanistan adventure travel with an extreme sport twist! This deliciously well-made documentary is, on paper, not really what one might imagine this festival is all about. However, once you’ve watched it you, like us, will be utterly certain that it merited inclusion thrice over! What’s more, it was shot and edited only last year and [...]
World Traveller Adventures – Mission to India (1998)
Warning: This film is extremely unusual! It is 100% eligible for the ATFF yet utterly unique in its content. A group of underground sound engineers, travellers, and new-age ravers hit the road in a bid to bring their dance music to a wider audience. Their scheme? To transport their entire caravan community, in its rag-tag [...]
