It may not be as well known as Telluride Mountainfilm, but there is another smaller, younger film festival in this region that takes inspiration from the local geography.

Its purpose is right there in its subtitle: “Because movies and mountains can change your life.”

Documentarian Jordan Campbell, the director of “Ukraine Under Fire: A Film About War & Resilience” (2025) is an example of the co-mingling between journalistic drive, and community support, and how far it can help take you.

“Jordan lives in this region,” said Jake Abell, co-director of the Ouray International Film Festival (OIFF), which will screen Campbell’s documentary next week in its entirety.

Campbell’s film recently screened to a sold-out audience at Mountainfilm. Yet he has been discussing his work in Ukraine — “Persistently supporting the work of journalists through this project, and others,” Abell said — “for years” at OIFF.

The film features Ukrainian TV presenter Olga Burko, who collaborates with Campbell “on a series of interviews, chronicling aspects of resistance, war crimes and acts of genocide,” in the course of the documentary.

The work “speaks to Ukraine’s quest for freedom, democracy and European integration, amidst the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II,” a description on OIFF’s website reads.

“This year, audiences will see the whole documentary,” Abell noted. “This represents the third year” — roughly half of this festival’s brief time in existence — “that we’ve been shining a light,” with Campbell’s assistance, “on the war in Ukraine.”

“Each year we’ve explored these stories in a different way,” Abell added. “We’re not here to leave these stories behind simply because we’ve already featured them. This year, it felt fitting to bring Jordan back to screen his entire film, which was just a six-minute teaser last year, and to give him our Film In Action Award,” which Campbell will receive following the screening next Friday, June 19 from 3-4:15 p.m. in the Wright Opera House (the fest’s locale).

Other highlights of the sixth annual festival, which will be held from Thursday, June 19 through Sunday, June 22, include the Colorado premiere of “The Baltimorons,” recent winner of the Narrative Spotlight Audience Award at SXSW 2025. Lead actor and writer Michael Strassner will be in Ouray to receive the OIFF’s Filmmaker Spotlight Award, which he shares with director Jay Duplass, and participate in a Q&A following an opening-night screening moderated by Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com.

“One of our board members attended SXSW, saw the film, fell in love with it,” Abell said, “and approached (the filmmakers) about bringing it to Ouray. We’re thrilled; this movie has been on a total tear. It’s a love song to Baltimore, and the people of that city. It will be a Christmas classic.” Its nationwide release later this year “has already been secured.”

As is traditional in Ouray, there will be short-film blocks with filmmakers in attendance (the first kicks off Thursday in advance of the premiere of “The Baltimorons”).

Jordan is not the only filmmaker in attendance who has been inspired by mountains. Director Jake Joynson’s “Notes Above the Clouds,” for example, which screens Friday, tracks a former software salesman who “now spends his summers looking after more than a thousand sheep at the top of Europe’s highest mountain ranges. What has it taught him?” The film is part of a block that also includes the latest work by Sisa Quispe — an award-winner last year in Ouray — whose new film is set in the Andes of Ayacucho, Peru (Quispe will also be in attendance at the Wright).

Saturday afternoon brings ‘Kinonekta: Filipino Cinema & Dance,’ a screening of short films by OIFF 2022 award-winner Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan. It is free and open to the public, and will be followed by an intermission with catered Filipino cuisine in the Wright’s Tavern. Following the feast, six more Filipino filmmakers — all of whom will be in residence — will screen their works from 4-6 p.m.

The fest wraps Sunday with more shorts, “All About Acting,” a panel on performance, an awards ceremony and an afterparty at KJ Wood Distillers.

“Dance, cuisine and film,” all in the same festival, “is definitely a first for us,” Abell said. “It’s a joy to share these cultural riches” with attendees. Abell is well aware that Telluride Bluegrass is also next weekend, “and if folks can only come over for a while, there’s a pathway for them to do that, by purchasing either a day pass or a session pass.”

This said, “We’re getting very close to selling out both day passes and film passes,” he noted. Although this nascent event principally draws audiences and filmmakers from Los Angeles, New York and overseas — and, increasingly, Denver, Nashville and Atlanta — “we love it when these final passes can go to folks from the Western Slope,” Abell said. “What we strive to do is create an atmosphere that is intimate and accessible. We’ve had a lot of opportunities to ‘scale up’ that we’ve passed on, for now. What we hear from patrons and filmmakers is that they enjoy these (up-close) interactions” in the Wright’s small space.

“We want to be able to sustain that,” Abell said, though who knows for how long.

To see a program, visit ourayfilmfestival.com.