This year Mountainfilm fixes its gaze on a map, on the swaths of blue covering 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, and on conflict-torn sectors of the globe that burst occasionally into the news, then vanish into obscurity.

It’s an election year, and the annual spring film festival is broadening its vision. In addition to symposia examining humans and water and a celebration of Everest mountaineer Edmund Hillary, the festival is turning an eye to modern-day slavery and foreign policy.

“We’re pushing the limits a little bit more on what we do, which is deliberate and conscious,” said Peter Kenworthy, the festival’s executive director. “We’ll always have great programming, but we want to become more and more socially conscious. We want to push the boundaries on the kind of environmental and cultural activists we bring here.”

So this year, the festival is brining a diplomat, a New York Times columnist, an adviser to Barack Obama and CNN’s star foreign correspondent to discuss the state of the world, the future of foreign policy and crises from Africa to the Middle East to Latin America.

“This is such a worldly audience and globally minded audience, and they want to be able to understand what’s going on from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Kenya to Myanmar,” said David Holbrooke, Mountainfilm’s festival director. “It’s so essential to what this festival is about.”

The festival is also bringing in a panel to discuss contemporary slavery, a growing human-rights disaster that has netted some 28 million people in its grips, across continents and political boundaries. Author Ben Skinner, who has written about modern-day slavery, will attend a panel, as will freed slaves.

“Contemporary slavery is an incredibly important human rights issue that has not been addressed on the level that it needs to be,” Holbrooke said.

After focusing on energy last year, Mountainfilm’s Moving Mountains Symposium will examine “the looming global water crisis” this spring. A host of authors, scientists and conservationists will discuss how humans are consuming water, polluting it, wasting it, fighting for it.

Kenworthy said that instead of homing in on a geographic area — Mongolia was the symposium topic in 2006 — the festival wanted to take on another critical topic.

“I think our timing is good,” Kenworthy said. “It’s a very relevant issue right now and lends itself to a very vital, vibrant discussion.”

Jacques Cousteau’s granddaughter, Alexandra, will discuss the fragile ecosystem her grandfather explored and fought to preserve. A second forum will focus on water consumption in the Southwest, where drought and the population boom have strained reservoirs and resources.

“We’re right in the Colorado River Basin, which is one of the most important watersheds in the world,” Kenworthy said. “We live very close to face with water issues. Water development in the West is one of the most intriguing, complex issues there is.”
And in true Mountainfilm form, the festival is honoring legendary climber and mountaineer Edmund Hillary, who died last month. Hillary and sherpa climber Tenzing Norgay were the first two climbers to summit Everest.

Hillary visited Telluride to attend Mountainfilm twice during the ‘90s. This year, mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears will host the tribute to Hillary, and the festival will show rarely-seen movies about his life of adventure.

The festival has also said it will show a new documentary, “Stranded,” which chronicles the rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes, inspiring the book “Alive.” The movie screened to acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival.