Why in the world would anyone ride a unicycle down the side of a volcano?

It’s a warm-up, of course, for the main challenge – a unicycle ride down the south face of the third-highest mountain in North America, El Pico de Orizaba in Mexico.

That kind of daredevil derring-do can mean only one thing: the Banff Mountain Film Festival is coming back to town.

“Unizaba,” which follows two “extreme unicyclists” on an excursion through Mexico, is one of the films featured this year in the festival’s traveling show – an evening of extreme sports, mountain culture and environment that gives Mainers a shot of mountain adrenaline each year at about this time. There will be screenings this year in Bangor, Ellsworth, Rockport, Augusta and Portland.

The festival has achieved almost cultlike status in the Ellsworth area, selling out The Grand Auditorium for both nights of the festival on a regular basis.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Kelly Cochrane, the marketing director for Cadillac Mountain Sports, the local sponsor for the festival shows in Bangor and Ellsworth. “It’s a fun atmosphere that brings lots of different people together. It’s sort of a party atmosphere before the show.”

There’s a core group of people who have attended regularly since the festival first came to the area eight years ago. They line up as soon as the tickets go on sale.

“They file in at Christmastime, getting tickets for family and friends because they know that that’s where they’re going to be,” she said.

The Ellsworth shows have been sold out for a week and a half, she said, and some procrastinators have been “devastated” to learn that there are no tickets available.

The Banff Mountain Film Festival is an international competition held each year at the Banff Centre in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. It features the world’s best films and videos on mountain subjects. This year, a record 250 films from 27 countries were submitted to the competition, which was held in November.

An international panel of judges selects the best films from the year’s offerings which, at the end of the festival, embark on a world tour that winds its way through North America before heading overseas. Last year, more than 100,000 people in 165 North American cities viewed the touring film show.

The films fall generally into two categories: mountain culture and extreme sports. Both feature spectacular scenery and highlight areas as far flung as Nepal, Alaska, South Africa and Antarctica.

Cultural films offer glimpses into cultures that exist in some of the harshest and most beautiful corners of our world, such as the seal hunters in the Arctic and the horsemen of Mongolia. The sports films, in addition to breathtaking vistas, provide heart-stopping action – kayaking down a waterfall or hang-gliding over the Himalayas – that can literally leave you gripping the armrests, but secretly asking yourself, “I wonder if I could do that.”

In addition to the lunatic unicyclists, the festival this year will feature “African B.A.S.E,” in which a group of international jumpers travel the East Coast of Africa to jump off things including a hotel, a radio antenna and a mountain; “Mustang,” which follows two friends as they travel over the ancient trade routes in Nepal; “The Battles of Braveheart” features a rare view of the lives of the Gelada baboons in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains; and “Berserk in the Antarctic,” in which a 19-year-old captain and an inexperienced crew challenge the high seas and inhospitable climate on a journey from Cape Horn to the Antarctic.

One of the highlights of this festival, according to Cochrane, will be the appearance of Ben Ayers, who appears in the festival film “Carrying the Burden,” which investigates the treatment of native porters in Nepal by the thousands of westerners who travel there each year. Ayers, who is traveling with the festival tour this year, will introduce that film and will be available for questions after the showing.

The festival films will be shown at the following locations in Maine: Thursday, Feb. 14, at Camden Hills Regional High School, Rockport; Friday, Feb. 15, at Bangor Opera House; Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 16-17, The Grand Auditorium, Ellsworth; Monday, Feb. 18, at Portland High School, Portland; and Tuesday, Feb. 19, at Cony High School, Augusta. All shows are at 7 p.m.