Like in every festival before, the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) this year brought non-fiction movies, with the sole purpose to enlighten the human mind, but in a different context. The KIMFF was back with many educational works, including 47 films from 20 countries, nine documentaries, short films, and animation films. The movies were divided into two parts: Nepal Panorama and International Competition.

David Breashears inaugurated the festival in Rastriya Sabha Griha. The five-day festival, between December 11 and 15, showed movies as worldwide deals with the issues on traditional practices, life-style, conflict, wildlife, mountaineering, environment, globalization and gender.

“The reason for choosing non-fiction movies is to present the societal issues among the people and also to make people familiar with the problem related to mountains, people and their social order. After all, KIMFF is all about the mountain people, their cultures and the way of their living,” remarked Basanta Thapa, chairperson. “In 2007, we celebrated the first annual event and targeted to achieve more and finally we are now at the heart of the capital, Rastriya Sabha Griha. On the whole, our aim is to convey the information and entertain the audience.”   

He said: "We trying to fulfill the ideal purpose and as we are getting positive responses from viewers, I want to admire my co-operative team-work, the strong-minded pioneers and those who chased their dreams of reaching higher goals,'' Thapa, an organizer from Himal Association since 2000, said.

One of the jury members and sociologists, Dr. Dyuti Baral, said, “You will get lots of entertainment and information from KIMFF and you cannot afford to miss it. As a judge, it was my first experience but I had seen many documentary movies before.” 

The first day of film event started with the world-premiere movie 'Chasing the Rainbows' directed by Sahara Sharma, starring Deepak Ghimire and Saman Pyakural. It is a non-fiction, independent movie and also an exploration of infinite and irresistible expectation of human feelings and struggles to grab success and happiness in the modern and stylish capital city of Nepal.

In the 88-minute film, scenes like passion  of youth towards technical devices, having lots of medicine tablets against frustration, the fashion of making English good from internet and many others fun loving and heart-touching acts have been presented in a convincing way.

In the five day event, other must watch movies were 'Red Monsoon' directed by Eelum Dixit, which was shown on the fourth day. 

Red Monsoon was highly applauded during its screening. The film projected the life of a family of Lalitpur. It takes the life of traditional Newar town of Lalitpur district where the surroundings are still different than elsewhere. Director Eelum Dixit was able to show human aspects and perceptions.

On the first day of this festival, “we are connected” was announced as the winner of short films organized by WWF.The competition was related to motivating and heartening the independent film-makers and scholars to take a more closer look with the environment and the natural creation.

Commonly, the people watch movies to entertain themselves and films have become one of the important mediators to educate people. Films make us laugh and equally make us conscious from the bitter reality of the society in an ironic way. In other words, it is a language of art just to educate the people with humorous and heart-touching acts in a convincing way.