Bilbao Mendi Film Festival, a film festival in style.

Adrenaline, adventure and self-improvement come together year after year at the Bilbao Mendi Film Festival, one of the most important mountain festivals in the world.

The union between the Basque people and the mountain is a nexus known in all the summits, a union that has ended up developing one of the 20 most prestigious mountain festivals around the world, Bilbao Mendi Film Festival. This mountain film festival has been held in the Basque Country since 2008, when it started in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. After accumulating great success in audience and popularity in its first 4 years, it managed to join the International Alliance of Mountain Film Festivals, a fact indicative of the quality of this great film festival. The fifth edition of the event, came with a change of scenery for Mendi Film Festival, causing the change of location of the festival, moving from the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz to Bilbao. That is why, when we talk about Mendi Film Festival today, we refer to it as Bilbao Mendi Film Festival, 10 days in which the mountain comes to the Basques and not the other way around as usual. Values, sensations and objectives that the big screen helps us to understand and appreciate, a spectacle.

Bilbao Mendi Film Festival or “Mendi” as this event is known among the most regulars, combines mountain, nature, adventure and culture, a very complete program that is beginning to stand out internationally. In addition to the projections of different short films and movies, Bilbao Mendi Film Festival allows us to enjoy photographic exhibitions, street theater and different activities organized throughout the year in other scenarios, being its main attraction the athletes who make an appearance in ‘Mendi’ providing direct testimony of their experience.

Year after year, we go to the “Mendi” to know in first person the best mountain films of the year, an event that we mark annually on the calendar. Our experiences have always taken place at the BBK hall on Bilbao’s Gran Vía, a stage where the films shown, their protagonists and the presenter of the event, Aitor Elduaien, never fail.

In the 2016 edition, we had the opportunity to enjoy Annapurna III- Unclimbed and The fourth phase, 2 films of great quality that narrate the ascent to the southeast ridge of Annapurna III and the adventures of Travis Rice respectively, 2 very exciting projects that we have known closely and good atmosphere. We must highlight the quality of both projections, a quality that was enhanced by the presence of David Lama, a true climbing hound. We recommend checking the technical specifications of the films on the website of Bilbao Mendi Film Festival, checking if they have guests or protagonists, a fact that gives added value to the screening of the film.

Once again this year, Aitor Elduaien, presenter of the Bilbao Mendi Film Festival, did a great job both in the presentation of the films and in the interview with the protagonists, a performance that this incredible communicator completed by linking phrases in Spanish, Basque and English as if they were his mother tongues, an entertaining and passionate speech with which he infected us once again.

If adventure is part of your life, we recommend you to visit Bilbao, a perfect city to acclimatize to the cold, wind and rain that lash the peaks that our protagonists climb. Settle into your seat and discover the world of adventure.