Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

Renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study the Costa Rican rainforest canopy. After surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she turns her research inward to understand the processes of disturbance and recovery in her own life, a journey documented in Between Earth and Sky. Nalini Nadkarni and director Andrew Nadkarni visited the Trail studios to discuss Betwee...

In the middle of a remote desert, two men are assigned to guard the ruins of an ancient kingdom. When the Dust Blows Through follows them as they confront the heat and thirst of the desert, as well as more insidious foes like loneliness and tomb raiders. Director Ethan Wu visited the Trail 103.3 studios to discuss the challenges of filming in such an inhospitable location, and why he felt called t...

The film Hollywood's Finest follows three mothers fighting to create a family: Mckenzie, a young woman in recovery who became pregnant while living in a tent; Cat, her nomadic mom; and Leslie, the social worker with her own history of addiction, housing insecurity, and losing children to foster care. Filmmakers Claire Hannah Collins and Gale Holland visited the ESPN Missoula studios to discuss the...

A chance encounter transformed Bernie Krause's life, setting the prolific composer and sound artist on a path to capture the sounds of a vanishing wilderness. The Last of the Nightengales is a haunting black-and-white film that follows Krause's journey, inviting the audience to experience the rich acoustic beauty of the living world through his ears. Director Masha Karpoukhina visited the Missoula...

Megan Harrington and Malia Kipp visit the ESPN Missoula studios to discuss the documentary film Native Ball: Legacy of a Trailblazer, which follows Kipp's journey from the Blackfeet Reservation to becoming the first Native American player in Montana Lady Griz history.

When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the mistreatment of Palestinians, they battle the old guard to create a new movement opposing Israel’s occupation, and recentering Judaism itself. That's the story of Israelism, which makes its world premiere Thursday at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Filmmakers Eric Axelman and Sam Eilertsen visited the Trail 103.3...

When professional skier Jamie MoCrazy fell during the slopestyle event at the World Tour Finals in 2015, she suffered a traumatic brain injury so severe that officials at the ski hill prepared her fatality report. The injury left her in a coma, with her entire right side paralyzed and her brain bleeding in eight places. #MoCrazyStrong is the story of MoCrazy's miraculous years-long recovery that h...

Director Anna Moot-Levin discusses her film Matter of Mind: My ALS. The documentary follows three people diagnosed with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease with no known cure, and the choices they make as they grapple with how best to treat the illness.

Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski visit the Missoula Broadcasting Company studios to discuss their documentary film The Hamlet Syndrome. Filmed just months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the documentary follows a group of Ukrainian actors struggling with the traumas of war, sexism and homophobia as they attempt to stage an adaptation of Hamlet that grapples with the contemporary challe...

Filmmakers Sean Paulsen and Brad Wickham detail the late-night cemetery stakeouts that went into making their film Shadow of a Dog. The film follows a man who roams the forgotten corners of New York, hoping to track down lost pets and re-unite them with their owners.

Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane, the subject of this year's Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Retrospective, visits the Trail 103.3 studio to talk about her films that will shown at the festival, with subjects as diverse as Kenny G, Richard Nixon, the Church of Satan and Depression-era snake oil salesman John Brinkley, who peddled goat testicles as a cure for impotence.

The film A Decent Home opened the 2022 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival by going inside mobile home parks, where some of the most affordable housing in the country is increasingly being bought out by the richest of the rich. In this episode of the BSDFF podcast, the Trail's Robert Chase talks with director Sara Terry about A Decent Home being shown on opening night and the main question of the fi...

While stuck in his apartment during the pandemic, Brian Gersten decided to make a film about one of his family's favorite pastimes - bowling. That film became Memory Lanes. In this episode of the BSDFF podcast, ESPN Missoula's Andrew Houghton sits down with Gersten to talk about the process of making a film completely from archival footage and how he grappled with the dark themes of American histo...

The closing night film at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is Charm Circle, a deeply personal glimpse into the lives of an eccentric New York family. In this episode of the Big Sky Doc fest podcast, the Trail's Robert Chase talks with director Nira Burstein about her first visit to Missoula and the process of making a film that documents her own family's nuances and identity.

Every winter, a ragtag group of crustpunks, libertarians, snowbirds, and elderly folks become unlikely neighbors during their annual pilgrimage to a temporary longterm camping community in Quartzsite, Arizona. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Colter Nuanez talks with Ryan Maxey, director of the film One Road to Quartzsite, about seeing his film make its world premi...

The swamp towns of south Florida, where kids chase rabbits through the muck of cut sugar cane fields, produce NFL talent at a rate that's almost unseen anywhere else in the country. When Ira McKinley returned to his hometown of Pahokee, he knew he wanted to make a film about the resilience and excellence that's persevered on the shores of Lake Okeechobee despite poverty and crushing natural disast...

Deep in the mountains of Montana and Idaho, a diverse group of Southeast Asian refugees, Latino immigrants and rural white Americans search for rare fungi. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Colter Nuanez talks with Olivier Matthon and Michael Reis of the film Up on the Mountain about the people searching for this wild crop and the issues of access and inequity that...

Hockey is religion in northern Minnesota, where ponds freeze over, snow drifts deep and kids strap up skates as soon as they can walk. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, ESPN Missoula's Colter Nuanez is joined by director Tommy Haines, producer Andrew Sherburne and cinematographer Ben Handler of the film Hockeyland, an up-close look at two high school hockey teams ch...

Quinn Brett was a hard-charging, record-setting mountain climber before a fall on Yosemite's famous El Capitan left her nearly dead and without the use of her legs. In the film An Accidental Life, director Henna Taylor intimately portrays Brett's arduous rehab and journey to find meaning in all that's been taken away from her. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Taylo...

Being Michelle tells the incredible story of a deaf autistic woman who spent five years in Florida prisons, trapped in a system unable to accommodate or even recognize her needs. Now free, Michelle and her caretakers struggle to heal her traumas and keep her out of the criminal justice system that's already caused her so much pain. In this podcast, presented by the Big Sky Documentary Film Festiva...