In the heart of Montenegro on a Sinjajevina plateau, shepherds Gara and Nada spend their lives in the highlands of their ancestral mountain, which they call “mother.”
The 2026 Sundance Film Festival documentary “To Hold a Mountain” follows the mother-daughter duo in their summer seasons on the mountain while they defend their home from becoming a NATO military training ground.
Directors Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić capture Gara and Nada’s lives across multiple summers, a David and Goliath epic that follows the pair’s community battle to defend their mountain.
Glomazić said it was clear from the start that Gara was someone he and Tutorov wanted to follow. In the film, Gara comes into scene astride a white horse, leading her community through the charge to ward off NATO’s efforts to transform their ancestral home.
“It was really clear that this woman carried something very big and very special,” Tutorov said.
Gara and Nada are not free of hardship. They have experienced their share of loss and grief, but they are hardworking, proud women nonetheless. For Tutorov, this project was in line with themes she has worked on in the past centered around female empowerment.
“It was very clear that they are powered by something, and this is really beautiful. Like, when you have all this hardship, it can also be turned into a power, and this film is a lot about empowerment,” Tutorov said.
It’s also a coming-of-age story for Nada, who grows up on screen as the film passes through summers. Entirely self-sufficient, the pair pilgrimage up to their mountain home each summer and survive with their herd of cattle and sheep, finding everything they need on the mountain.
Glomazić said the fight for the mountain and the nature of their way of life was the basis for the friendship the directors developed with Gara and Nada over the seven years they filmed. They did not act for the camera. Instead, they simply lived their lives.
“It was really something we created in mutual efforts. So, it opened the door for us to film something really special and really rare and to reach this pure, observational and very tame material, which is full of dramatic potential,” Glomazić said.
Glomazić and Tutorov decided early on that they would not follow Gara and Nada through the wintertime, when they journey into the valleys. Instead, they wanted the mountain of Sinjajevina to be a character in itself.
They knew they needed time to film, but spending those years on the mountain helped them capture the cyclical nature of life. With stunning cinematography, Glomazić and Tutorov showed how, through each season, there are patterns that steadily repeat themselves.
“So it was really like with painting — we could study and then redo, and we knew the things would come again,” Tutorov said.
Tutorov said the echo between the two stories of Gara and Nada are what triggered the project. They became interested because of the threat to the mountain and interviewed the community for two years. But, when Gara came into focus, everything else followed.
“It was really obvious that this parallel between militarization and violence against women are connected. Also, that from patriarchy, it’s all coming. And then the presence of military there, in that land, in the mountain they call mother. It was really obvious that it is the same thing and that women never produce these kinds of behaviors,” Glomazić said.
Glomazić, who is from Montenegro, said he learned about the community from years of mountaineering and walking through the Montenegrin mountains. He said the risk of losing these lands is something he and Tutorov wanted to highlight.
“This economic model of common land is also really something very interesting in this whole story of how to use the land, how to treat the people,” Glomazić said. “We have to let people do what they are doing, and what they did through centuries.”
“To Hold a Mountain,” which premiered on Jan. 26, is Tutorov and Glomazić’s Sundance Film Festival documentary debut. They said they are pleased to have such an impactful platform to share Gara and Nada’s story. Symbolically, Tutorov said it’s also impactful to launch a film that started in the mountains of Montenegro now in the mountains of Utah.
Glomazić said he hopes audiences will take away the most basic things about Gara and Nada’s story.
“The simple things we show in our film — related to the destiny of our life, to our existence, about the care, about love — is the most important thing, and it is universal. It is all the same. It doesn’t matter which culture it is or what time it is, where it happened, the things are the same,” Glomazić said.
Tutorov said she hopes the story will inspire hope.
“It’s very powerful and very rare in a documentary to see the end of a battle,” Tutorov said. “Today, when we all start to really have doubts in institutional democracy, (you) see that it’s worthwhile fighting for some small things and this action without compromise and being brave, both in intimate life and publicly.”
‘To Hold a Mountain’ in-person screenings
- 2:30 p.m., Jan. 29, Megaplex Redstone 4
- 3:15 p.m., Jan. 30, Broadway Centre Cinemas 6
- 12:45 p.m., Feb. 1, Holiday Village Cinemas 2