Boulder International Film Festival to celebrate 20 years, return of Adventure Film Pavilion

BOULDER — The Boulder International Film Festival will return in March 2024 with a celebration of two decades of community support and the return of the Adventure Film Pavilion.

“This year is our 20th anniversary, so we’re really excited about that,” BIFF director Kathy Beeck said. “We’re going to be doing some extra things, and a theme this year is a thank-you to the community. It’s been 20 years of wonderful films, parties, workshops and all kinds of fun stuff.”

Four days of movie screenings, parties, concerts, culinary competitions with local chefs, filmmaker meet-and-greets and other events are spread across more than half-dozen Boulder venues and will kick off on Feb. 29, 2024.

“It’s such a cliched phrase, but we really do have something for everyone,” Beeck said. 

In honor of BIFF’s 20 years, the 2024 event will include screenings of audience favorites from past festivals. “One of the reasons why film is so powerful is that there are some films you just don’t ever forget,” Beeck said. “We have so many of those from over the years.”

Organizers expect that the festival, which typically features between about 60 and 80 films, will draw about 20,000 attendees. “We had a few years where (attendance) dipped during COVID, but we found that last year at BIFF 2023 we’d recovered from that and reached 90% of our level from 2020,” Beeck said. “We’re really happy about that — people are definitely coming back.”

The 2024 festival will not only celebrate BIFF’s 20-year history, but also the legacy of the Boulder Adventure Film Festival, an outdoor and adventure sports and recreation-centric event founded in 2004 by the late Jonny Copp.

Copp died in a 2009 avalanche on a climbing expedition in China, but his festival lived on for years.

“We would cooperate with them,” Beeck said of the Boulder Adventure Film Festival organizers. “… We just loved working with them … but they went away about four years ago.”

BIFF is bringing the Boulder Adventure Film Festival back in 2024 with the Adventure Film Pavilion at Grace Commons Church, which will host a series of events and screenings of films that could feature anything from climbing to skiing to skateboarding. 

“The bottom line is great storytelling,” Beeck said. “… We hope that we’re taking Jonny’s spirit forward with us.”

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