WORLD TRAILS FILM FESTIVAL — JOURNAL

Announcing 2026 Award Winners from Perth/Boorloo, Australia

Announcement!

Jay Simpson

TRAILS FILM FESTIVAL DIRECTOR

Hi, Reader,

We were thrilled to announce these awards at our Awards Showcase at the World Trails Conference in Perth/Boorloo, Australia:

BEST FEATURE: Remaining Native by Paige Bethmann

A Native American teenager chasing his dream of collegiate running discovers that his greatest race is learning how to carry the legacy of his great-grandfather’s escape from an Indian boarding school.

BEST SHORT FEATURE: Transcendence by Ben Haggar

Artists and writers explore Northern British Columbia’s mountain bike trails to uncover the hidden stories, emotions, and identities embedded in the landscape.

BEST SHORT: The Backcountry Horsement of Pisgah by Tommy Penick

Faced with collapsing trail infrastructure and limited funding, horseback riders, volunteers, and land managers unite to preserve access to North Carolina’s legendary backcountry.

EMERGING FILMMAKER AWARD: Zelzin Aketzalli, Zelzin, Footsteps of Inspiration

Zelzin is a filmmaker, high-performance endurance athlete, and trail builder. She was the first person from Mexico to complete the Triple Crown and is now making a film about her project to create the Baja Sierra Trail, Mexico’s first long-distance national trail.

GALEO PRIZE (AUDIENCE CHOICE): Breaking Trail by Jesse Roesler

Emily Ford sets out with Diggins, a borrowed sled dog, to become the first woman and person of color to thru-hike the 1200-mile Ice Age Trail in winter.

Winners all receive cash prizes and Trails Film’s handcrafted silk flags, made by our friends at Kinetika.

For the love of trails, ✌︎

ℹ️ About World Trails Film Festival

TRAILS MOVE US. TOGETHER WE CELEBRATE TRAILS.

The World Trails Film Festival is an advocacy film festival that celebrates trail stories and supports on-the-ground trail groups through festival events. In partnership with trail organizations and international conferences, we’ve held screenings in Taiwan, Lebanon, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Our festival programming is much more than adrenaline-packed adventure films on trails, as we center stories that include a wide range of themes, including the power of nature and environmental issues, disability and adaptive recreation, mental health, community building, urban trails, trail-making and maintenance, women and minority groups on trail, and more.

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The World Trails Film Festival is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of The World Trails Film Festival must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Announcing 2026 Award Winners from Perth/Boorloo, Australia

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