Three concurrent film festivals send a shower of very different films our way.

The Carmel International Film Festival is no more. But there are plenty of other film festivals to choose from. Three of them even start this week.

LatinX LGBTQ+ Film Festival

Their first year they screened only one film. The second year, they expanded to two days, and 400 people showed up. This year – assembled by a coalition of nonprofits, schools, government and foundations – it’s grown into true festival dimensions: four days, three venues, a reception, an art opening, short and feature films, panels, poetry and guest speakers. It’s bilingual, inclusive and free.

It’s also bold work. The 2013 feature narrative film Pele Malo invites us into the world of Junior, a 9-year old boy of mixed heritage living with his single mom in a Venezuelan high-rise projects. He’s beset with challenges for his queerness, his curly hair and for being poor.

The trailer for the short doc TransVisible, about trans activist Bamby Salcedo, starts with her yelling into a bullhorn, “Stop the bullshit!”

This is one of the most forward edges of a movement staking out voices previously unheard from. Festival co-organizer Angelica N. Gonzalez of nonprofit Epicenter Monterey, states: “Celebrating this LatinX LGBTQ+ identity is important and necessary to us because it brings forth the concept of intersectionality. For example, I am not only Mexican. I am not only queer and nonbinary. I am all of those things and more.”

It opens Thursday, March 1, with a reception, art opening, spoken word, drawings, etc. Then the films commence over three days in different venues in Salinas, focusing on family, politics, youth, undocumented people and queer identity.

6-8pm Thu at CSUMB Salinas Center for Arts and Culture; 5pm Fri at Western Stage’s Main Stage; 5pm Sat at CSUMB Salinas Center for Arts and Culture; 1pm Sun at Alisal Center for the Fine Arts (March 1-4). Free. 998-7291, ourgente@epicentermonterey.org.

Carmel Jewish Film Festival

Although the 10 films in this festival deal with the Jewish experience in some way, according to festival founder and co-chair Susan Greenbaum, there is diversity and universality: “For example, Body & Soul: An American Bridge will appeal to jazz and soul music lovers. The Sturgeon Queens is for foodies. The Women’s Balcony has a feminist angle and relates to what is currently happening in the women’s movement.”

There are films that go back in time too, like the WWII-era of Fanny’s Journey, a seemingly gentler version of the true account of a tween girl who is charged with escorting seven Jewish kids out of Nazi-occupied France.

Body and Soul, about the symbiotic and contentious interplay between Jewish composers and black musicians over the life of the song “Body and Soul,” won Best Music Documentary at the San Francisco Black Film Festival. For its Carmel screening, filmmaker Robert Philipson is coming for a Q&A.

Other visits include Jewish speakers who share stories of the 1970s Free Soviet Jewry movement in the former Soviet Union, for the film Operation Wedding; and Leah Novick, the oldest female rabbi, currently living in Carmel, speaks on a panel after The Women’s Balcony.

The festival hops across multiple venues over the entire month of March, like a moveable feast. It even ends with a Jewish food tasting event. Mazel tov!

Receptions and films run various times March 3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 21 and 24 throughout Monterey County. $8-$12/general; $10/silver reception ticket; $20/gold reception ticket. 624-2015, carmeljff.org.

BANFF Mountain Film Festival

If there is a theme to this year’s BANFF Film Festival, which is sponsored by REI and benefits Return of the Natives, Laura Lee of RON states it like this: “Push the limits.”

The human limits of altitude and weather, of physics and daring, of preparation and improvisation.

That may sound like a lot of arduous effort for what are essentially variations on the same adrenaline rush. But that doesn’t have to diminish an adventure doc like Into Twin Galaxies – A Greenland Epic, about these dudes who trek across Greenland to kayak the northernmost river ever paddled. Or the wacky and crazy Flying Frenchies in Surfing the Line who combine incongruous stuff on zip lines like surfboards, live music, feathers, clown costumes and base jumping.

There’s more to the fest than adrenaline junkies jumping off mountains.

Cinematography plays a big role in the short film Johanna. After a biking accident that nearly cost Johanna Nordblad her leg, she took to arctic free diving as therapy, and excelled at the dangerous but ethereal activity. The film plays like a tone poem about finding other worlds here on Earth.

There are films about summiting all kinds of challenges – like women carving a space in a male-dominated sport. The 2016 Ecuadorian short La Casita Wip is about two young women who wanted to race their BMX bikes on a track of their own design. So they built it.

Yes, this is a festival that revolves on altitude and weather, physics and daring, preparation and improvisation, but it’s also about the beauty of the natural world we live in – and sometimes jump off.

7pm Sat, March 3, at Golden State Theatre, Monterey. $20. 649-1070, goldenstatetheatre.com.