Stories That Move Mountains: NZ Mountain Film Festival Comes to Queenstown
Two nights at the Memorial Centre, the best of the Wanaka programme, and the best thing to do in Queenstown on a June evening when your legs have gone.
Every June the NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival spends a week in Wanaka and then brings the best of it over the hill for two nights in Queenstown. Those two nights are the part worth planning around if you are based here, and they are the answer to the June evening where the snow has not arrived, or has arrived and taken your legs with it. A car makes the whole thing easier, which is most of the reason Evolve Rentals exists in a town built on getting out of town.
What happens on the Queenstown nights?
Two evenings of films and speakers at the Queenstown Memorial Centre, 1 Memorial Drive, right in the middle of town.
It is a curated selection rather than the full programme. Wanaka gets the whole festival across five days, and Queenstown gets the edit, which is arguably the better deal if you only have two nights in you. The award winners are usually in it, the short films carry more of the evening than you expect, and there is a festival pass if you would rather not pick between sessions.
Practically it is an easy night out. The Memorial Centre is in the middle of town, so you are parking where you would park for dinner anyway and you can eat either side of a session without moving the car. If you take the festival pass, your seat is held as long as you are through the door within ten minutes of the start, which in a Queenstown June is a good argument for walking up early rather than cutting it fine in the cold.
Expect a mix. Big expedition films from remote places, quieter local stories that are more about people than summits, and a few environmental and cultural documentaries that will sit with you longer than the climbing footage does.
Do you need to be a climber to enjoy it?
No, and the festival would be much smaller if you did.
If you like landscape, travel, or watching people do difficult things a long way from help, you will find plenty in it. Some of the best received films most years are the ones with the least rope in them. It is also a genuinely easy night to turn up to alone, which not every festival is.
If two nights is not enough, the full festival is the one in Wanaka, spread across five days, with the books, the speakers, the outdoor expo and the writing and film schools that the Queenstown edit has no room for. That is a different trip rather than a longer one. Wanaka is about an hour away over the Crown Range, and in winter that drive has rules of its own.
When is the next festival?
Wanaka runs from 18 to 22 June 2027 and Queenstown takes 24 and 25 June 2027. If you want the programme, the award winners and the practicalities of doing both towns in one trip, that is all in our guide to the festival and the drive between the two, which goes into the Crown Range and the winter chain rules properly.
Why bother with a car for a film festival?
Because of the hours either side of it, not the ten minutes to the venue.
A festival night starts in the evening, which leaves a whole Queenstown winter day in front of it. That is a morning on the mountain and an afternoon somewhere else, or if the snow is not playing, one of the winter drives that need no four wheel drive. Glenorchy in June, with the light low and almost nobody on the road, is worth the trip on its own.
June in Queenstown is a short day and that is the thing to build the plan around. There is enough daylight for one good thing, not two. Pick the mountain or pick the drive, get back into town with time to eat properly, and let the evening be the festival. Trying to fit a third thing in is how people end up asleep twenty minutes into the opening film, which is a waste of a ticket and slightly insulting to whoever spent two years making it.
Book the sessions before you book anything else. June is busy here regardless of the snow, the Memorial Centre is not a large room, and the popular sessions go first. The car is the flexible part of the trip. The tickets are not.
The other reason is the walk back. Queenstown in late June is properly cold once the sun has gone, and a film that finishes at ten is a different proposition depending on whether your car is outside or your accommodation is twenty minutes uphill. If you are filling the rest of the trip, we have written up winter in Queenstown without skis and where to find a proper hot chocolate on the way home.
And if two nights of other people's expeditions leaves you convinced you could do something similar with a phone and a borrowed jacket, you will not be the first. The road out to Glenorchy has been the opening shot of more amateur adventure films than anyone has counted.
Book with Evolve Rentals and tell us where you are staying. We bring the car to you, which nobody else in Queenstown does, so the festival evening does not start with a walk to a counter in the dark.
FAQs
Where is the NZ Mountain Film Festival held in Queenstown?
At the Queenstown Memorial Centre, 1 Memorial Drive, in the centre of town. The Queenstown leg runs over two evenings and shows a selection from the full Wanaka programme.
When is the next NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival?
Wanaka from 18 to 22 June 2027, and Queenstown on 24 and 25 June 2027. The festival runs every June and splits itself between the two towns the same way each year.
Do you have to see the whole festival?
No. You can buy into a single session, or take the festival pass if you would rather not choose. The pass guarantees a seat at every show provided you turn up within ten minutes of the start.
Is it worth going if you do not climb?
Yes. A good share of the programme is travel, landscape and people rather than technical climbing, and the short films tend to be the ones people talk about afterwards.