The sixth Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival will be held in City Hall and Nepal Tourism Board from December 11-15, 2009. It will screen 59 of the most recent and exciting films about mountains, their culture, communities and environment. There will also be a separate screening of entries by Nepali filmmakers about the country's post-war social transition called 'Nepal Panorama', and a screening of short films about climate change. Selected synopses below:

A Sea Change
Barbara Ettinger
86 min

Imagine a world without fish. A Sea Change is the first documentary about ocean acidification, the flip side of global warming. Sven Huseby travels around the world to discover the science behind acidification and what can be done to slow or stop this global threat.

In Search of the Riyal
Kesang Tseten
88 min

In the last two decades, many young Nepali men have set out to work in the Gulf for wages as low as $6 a day. This film depicts the gritty conditions in which they live and work. It's a rare glimpse of a world Gulf states have taken pains to hide.

The Garden
Scott Hamilton Kennedy
88 min

This film is a potent human drama, a case study of how hardball politics is played. The Garden has the pulse of verit? with the narrative pull of fiction, telling the story of the largest urban farm in the US, backroom deals, land developers, green politics, money, poverty, power, and racial discord. The film explores and exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Sherpas-Die Wahren Helden Ah Everest (Sherpas - The True Heroes of Mount Everest)
Frank Senn, Hari Thapa, Otto C. Honneger
93 min

This film follows an expedition of European mountaineers as they climb Mount Everest, through the eyes of their Sherpa porters. Their fears, and the hardships they face as they help their clients to the top of the world, are highlighted, and we experience the highs and tragic lows of the expedition.

Check www.kimff.org for the festival schedule