Join us as we kick off the 8th Season of the Overland Expo Film Festival at Overland Expo West in Flagstaff, Arizona, May 20-22. The film festival brings a curated selection of short and long-form films documenting vehicle-based travel adventures both near and far to the Fieldcraft Survival Overland Theater Friday and Saturday evening.
FRIDAY, MAY 20TH
7:00 PM – OVERLAND EXPO FOUNDATION CHARITY RAFFLE
Friday’s viewing of the Overland Expo Film Festival will be kicked off by a charity raffle for the Overland Expo Foundation. There will be thousands of dollars in overland prizes given away from our sponsors for vehicle and moto-based adventurers. Tickets are available for purchase online in advance, at check-in, at the Overland Expo Foundation / Ultimate Builds booth at the show, and at the Fieldcraft Survival Theater from 6:30 pm – 7:00 pm on Friday night. You must be present to win.
8:00 PM – FEATURE FILM: Wyoming Backcountry Discovery Route
Sterling Noren lives to explore, discover, create, and share. He began his professional film career in 1990 and created his first adventure motorcycling film in 1998. He is a founding member of the Backcountry Discovery Routes organization and produces films and advertising for the adventure motorcycling community including The Motorcycle Travel Channel. Sterling lives in Bisbee, Arizona where he owns and operates a small vintage motel called The Jonquil. He regularly presents his films before live audiences and encourages others to live inspiring lives of travel and adventure.
SATURDAY, MAY 21ST
7:00 PM – Overland Expo Film Festival Day 2
Why We Roam: Bound for Nowhere
Join us Saturday night for the debut of Season 2 of our “Why We Roam” film series. This episode features MAK and Owen of Bound for Nowhere. For them, it all started with a simple road trip after college. They spent 6 months living in a Honda Element, driving 14,000 miles, visiting 21 National Parks and 36 states. Two years later, they had desk jobs, two cars, and a house, wondering why they didn’t continue their roadtrip.
One night they stayed up and wrote out a plan for how to live on the road full time and take their careers with them. On April 19th, 2016, two years after the night they made that plan, a van had been purchased and overhauled, they’d gotten married, they’d both quit their jobs, they’d started two new freelance careers and it was the first day they called the road home. They haven’t looked back since. While living on the road, they’ve traveled to Alaska and most recently, Mexico, documenting their journey through film along the way.
Be sure to stick around after the film’s debut for MAK and Owen’s Q&A session.
Films: Promises to Keep: Overland Anthem and Overlanding the Forgotten Edge of Idaho
Filmmaker Bio: Will Fowler
Venture2Roam is Will and Kate Fowler, a couple based in Boise, Idaho who adventure the more remote parts of the American West with family and friends. New to the Filmmaking and Youtube world, they are interested in finding the underlying themes of why we need to connect to the natural world and how Overlanding, even on shorter trips, can provide life changing experiences. Will and Kate are Idaho natives who left home for NYC after college.
READ MORE: Eat & Drink Your Way Around the World at Overland Expo West
After six years in the big city, traveling all over the world, and experiencing some of the finer things in life, they moved back to Boise. Being back home, they reintroduced themselves to the epic amounts of public land found in Idaho, and the place they always took for granted as kids became an outdoor playground as adults. Venture2Roam was formed as a pathway to share their passion with others while exploring the creativity of storytelling with video.
Film Synopsis: Overland Anthem
This is an Overland Anthem for those who know These Four Walls Can’t Hold us in. Please enjoy our Love Song to Overlanding and those who Venture 2 Roam across our beautiful public lands. Not everyone catches the Overlanding bug, but for those of us who have, this Anthem video is for you.
Film Synopsis: Overlanding the Forgotten Edge of Idaho
We set out to Overland the Bruneau Desert on the Edge of the Forgotten part of Idaho. We made sure to have fun on this video. From the “epic” trailer at the beginning, to giving Tim a hard time for being last to pack up camp…this trip was all about fun..and mud…and views…and friendship…you know…Overlanding stuff. You’ll find Jeeps, Tundras, and Land Rover Discos all getting along!
Film: Road to Wanderlust
Filmmaker Bio: Ben Fullerton, Sam Salwei, and Raquel Hernández-Cruz
YogaSlackers Sam Salwei and Raquel Hernández are lovers of movement. Limitations are a foreign concept to this teaching duo, as they spend their time traveling the world and fulfilling their dreams of being true modern-day nomads. Whether it’s driving coast-to-coast, or hopping on an airplane to travel overseas, the motivation is usually the same: bringing their passion for traveling and slacklining to students all over the world.
What they lack in square footage for living space, they make up for with the wealth of expertise and knowledge they bring with them. Sam Salwei co-founded the YogaSlackers in 2005, and his passion for Slacklining has only grown since then. He typically can be found aweing crowds with his spectacles at every opportunity. Raquel perfectly complements Sam with her extensive training in Yoga, AcroYoga, Slacklining, and Healing Arts.
Film Synopsis
What would it be like to live a life of true wanderlust?
A life where home is 28 square feet inside a 1988 Ford Festiva, and your days are filled with travel, teaching, and spectacular adventures. Meet Sam Salwei, Raquel Hernandez, and the Peace Love Car – two charmingly talented wanderers and their trusty (if quirky) steed.
The Peace Love Car is one-of-a-kind. A solar panel on the roof provides power for the fridge, the seats fold down into a bed, and the oven under the hood can cook you a perfect burrito. Its custom-built shocks bear 1,500lbs of adventure gear with nary a squeak (OK, not true), and it has transported its occupants with moderate reliability across almost half a million miles of open road.
Two years after this duo started living together in their beloved vehicle – the Peace Love Car started to die.
After their mechanic declared that, due to a rusting unibody, the PLC had only about a year to live, Sam and Raquel decided to take it on a final farewell. They took their vehicle on a 45,000-mile tour of North America, crossing the continent 7 times and visiting all 49 states and most of Canada in less than 8 months. Along the way they met an array of amazing people and pushed their bodies (and relationship) to the limits in some of the most beautiful locations on Earth.
Film: MYLO
Filmmaker Bio: Chris Burkard
Chris Burkard is an accomplished explorer, photographer, creative director, speaker, and author. Traveling throughout the year to pursue the farthest expanses of Earth, Burkard works to capture stories that inspire humans to consider their relationship with nature, while promoting the preservation of wild places everywhere.
Layered by outdoor, travel, adventure, surf, and lifestyle subjects, Burkard is known for images that are punctuated by untamed, energized landscapes and peak moments of adventure. He has accumulated an audience of over one million followers to become a globally recognized social influencer.
Film Synopsis
Mylo Fowler grew up on the Navajo reservation, raised by its red dirt and wild horses. But a spiritual elder’s prophecy upends his entire vision of the future, and Mylo enters the unknown to discover his rightful place in the world.
Film: Labels
Filmmaker Bio: Asia Samson
Asia Samson is an overlanding content creator that started his YouTube channel Baptism Overland in 2017. At the time, he was just uploading videos periodically as his main career was touring colleges performing spoken word poetry. But in the height of the pandemic, quarantine grounded many artists like himself and, trying not to stay cooped up in the house, decided to overland more often while also creating content. Since then, the channel has grown to nearly 6k subscribers in less than 2 years.
Film Synopsis
Adventure is a lifestyle and a mindset. It’s not about the gear you own or the rig you drive. It’s about finding the most beautiful places in the world regardless of how you get there- and overlanding is just one of many means. This film is about the spirit of adventure and exploration. It’s about leaving your comfort zone and discovering new places. It’s about sharing that spirit with like-minded people without judgement or criticism. But more importantly, it’s about shedding the labels we put on our hobbies so we don’t lose sight of why we fell in love with it in the first place.
Film: What Does Freedom Mean to You?
Filmmaker Bio: Julianna Rose
As a kid I was always fascinated by nature, if you wanted to find me you would just have to look in the backyard, where I would be catching frogs, tadpoles and even snakes! I wasn’t afraid to get dirty! There was something about the wild that drew me to it, that is where I always felt alive and more myself, somewhere I could be free to be who I was meant to be.
As I grew up, I found myself wanting something different, but I soon lost my way, and found myself depressed and thinking there was nothing in this world for me. I lost myself, that was until I found the FJ Cruiser, the small fire barely holding on in my heart started to burn again, and before I knew it I found the overlanding community and my fire grew more and more until it was burning strong and bright as it was when I was a kid!
READ MORE: The Value of the Overland Experience Pass at Overland Expo
Overlanding saved me, in more ways than I even could imagine, it gave me a way to do more, I was able to drive to places only some people see in magazines! I was hooked, from there I learned many things about these lifestyles and soon enough I knew what I wanted in life, finally I had a goal or a dream to strive to achieve, and that was a life living on the road in a home on wheels I built. Something I could be proud of.
I started to wonder what it would be like to live fulltime in it, and I started to build the FJ Cruiser for that someday, not the most practical of vehicles to live in but it was all I had! When Covid happened, I was forced to make the decision sooner than I thought, I lost my job, I couldn’t afford rent, and now I was living in my FJ but I didn’t let that get me down, instead I let it guide me. The world was telling me it was time! So I took a step and onto the road I went! Here I am now today, one year in and still loving every minute of it, the stories and the people I have met along the way is what makes it even more enjoyable.
Film Synopsis
When you think of freedom what comes to mind? Is it being able to do anything you want? If you’re anything like me, it’s overlanding.
This video gives you an idea of how Overlanding really makes me feel, it opens my eyes, soul, body, heart, and heals me, it’s something that is not only my passion, but my life. This lifestyle saved me. Without it I don’t think I’d have the motivation I have today to continue. This film shows what it’s like to live on the road and how it truly can change your life.
Film: Lost and Found Episode 1
Filmmaker Bio: Mary Ashley Krogh and Owen Chikazawa
Mary Ashley Krogh (MAK) and Owen Chikazawa (just Owen) met in 2008 at Savannah College of Art and Design. They’ve been inseparable since both as a couple and collaborators. After pursuing careers as commercial artists, they set out to travel full-time. Having now been on the road for six years, their literal and figurative horizons have broadened. Their film and photography work is inspired by their adventures traveling, wildlife, and a boundless curiosity for the world
Film Synopsis
Lost & Found EP.01 A long journey to Alaska starts in the Pacific Northwest as MAK & Owen prepare to head up to the Final Frontier on the Alaska Marine Highway. The passage on the ferry takes them from the port in Bellingham, Washington nearly a 1000 miles north, to Juneau Alaska. The boat navigates an intricate path through a narrow network of corridors and islands on the Pacific Northwest coast. Episode 1 of 15 in the Lost & Found series.
Film: Extreme Overland Journey in Oregon’s Outback
Filmmaker Bio: Nick Jaynes
Raised in Portland, Oregon, outdoor adventure — hiking, camping, backpacking, and mountain biking — has always played a big role in Nick Jaynes’ life. In 2010, Nick’s passion for outdoor exploration and his love of 4×4 trucks were combined when he discovered overlanding. He’s been an advocate of the pastime ever since. Nick currently has three overlanding vehicles, a 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ80, 2008 Toyota FJ Cruiser, and 2022 Toyota Tundra SR5 . No matter which vehicle he’s traveling in, his trusty retriever, Arlo, is always riding shotgun, as the pair traverse the wilderness of the Western US.
Film Synopsis
Nick Jaynes and Josh Ashcroft attempt a late winter overlanding trip through Owyhee, Oregon’s outback, only to discover worse conditions than they anticipated. After wading through rivers and traversing slick, muddy, and snowy roads, they eventually reach their final destination: a warm springs waterfall.
Join Us At Overland Expo West
The Overland Expo Film Festival is included in your ticket to Overland Expo West, May, 20-22 at Fort Tuthill County Park in Flagstaff, Arizona. Buy Tickets.
