Gara, the guiding force at the center of “To Hold a Mountain,” is living proof that not all heroes wear capes. Her days begin before sunrise — herding sheep across vast alpine pastures, making cheese by hand, and protecting the land she calls home. Alongside this relentless labor, she is raising young Nada to be resilient, compassionate, and unafraid.
In their striking documentary, co-directors Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić craft a visually arresting portrait of a remote Montenegrin mountain community sustained by women’s labor, intergenerational care, and grassroots resistance. What unfolds is both intimate and epic: a story of land defense, ecological stewardship, and the quiet, enduring power of maternal love.
“To Hold a Mountain” received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize.
But the project began not in activism — rather, in personal longing.
“Petar is actually an aeronautical engineer,” Tutorov explains. “He was the CEO of our national airline for many years and became fed up with corporate life. He’s also a serious mountaineer. One day he said, ‘I’m a filmmaker,’ and proposed making a film about this semi-nomadic shepherd community.”
At first, she resisted.
“I told him, ‘It’s not really my subject — it’s yours.’ But about a year later, when the story became more political and more feminist, I realized it was too big a responsibility for one person. That’s when I joined.”
For Glomazić, the connection was deeply personal from the start.
“I knew this community — we filmed them for seven years,” he says. “My family is rooted in that way of life. As a boy, I spent summers in the mountains with my cousins. I was always amazed by this ancient, traditional lifestyle and wanted to tell their story.”
That story took on urgency when geopolitical forces intervened.
“After Montenegro joined NATO, there was a plan to turn their land into a military training ground,” he explains. “We realized we had to document this way of life — but also help defend it. Alongside filming, we worked with the community to organize, understand their rights, and fight for their land.”
The stakes were immense.
“It’s one of the largest pastoral communities in Europe,” Tutorov notes. “Two thousand meters in altitude, 500 square kilometers, now UNESCO-protected. It’s also a major water reservoir — snowmelt from that plateau irrigates two of the region’s largest deltas. It was completely illogical as a military testing site.”
The mountain itself — vast, ancient, maternal — became a central character.
“The people call it ‘mother,’” says Glomazić. “They’re totally connected to it.”
That connection mirrors the film’s focus on women as cultural and ecological stewards. Over centuries, pastoral practices there evolved as systems of conservation.
“The land is communal — not privatized,” he explains. “Governed by rules developed through millennia. Their traditions protect the ecosystem.”
When the filmmakers met Gara and Nada, they immediately sensed the emotional core of the film — though its depth revealed itself slowly.
“We knew they would be central,” Tutorov says. “But we didn’t yet understand the layers behind their strength.”
Trust developed over years — aided by the filmmakers’ immersive approach. The production was as rigorous as the lives it documented.
“We spent more than 230 shooting days in the mountains,” Glomazić recalls. “Living in a shepherd’s hut without water or electricity — just the three of us.”
Their cinematographer, Eva — London-based but regionally rooted — joined them in near-monastic conditions.
“At first I was shocked,” Tutorov laughs. “It was so basic. But it became beautiful. We made bread, built fires, cooked. Sometimes we’d only shoot an hour a day because we were helping with daily work.”
This intimacy shaped the film’s observational style.
“We never wanted interviews or to push them,” she says. “For example, we discovered Gara and Nada sleeping together while filming morning routines. It felt too intimate — culturally taboo. We thought we’d never use it. But later, when they told us to share their story fully, we included it.”
Over time, the relationship transcended filmmaking.
“We became family,” Glomazić says. “The fight to protect the mountain bonded us.”
That battle — against militarization — runs parallel to the film’s exploration of patriarchy and violence.
“We were interested in the connection between militarization and violence against women,” Tutorov explains. “We believe those roots are linked.”
Yet the film resists didactic framing. Instead, it leans into mythic and dramatic language.
“We thought of the mountain like a Greek chorus — a witness,” she says. “The music follows that idea. The mountain holds memory, tragedy, history.”
Religious and cultural iconography further deepens the narrative — particularly through the presence of Gara’s murdered mother.
“In Orthodox tradition, icons are central,” Tutorov notes. “Her mother’s photograph functions like an icon — an invisible character.”
Glomazić adds: “She’s dead but present — on the wall, in their hearts. Meanwhile, the father is alive but absent. That duality shaped the film.”
Motherhood reverberates beyond human relationships — extending into the animal world.
“Every animal has a name,” he says. “You can feel the trust — especially between Gara and the cow and her calf. That bond is profound.”
If motherhood is the emotional spine of the film, Nada represents its future.
“From the beginning, we said we wouldn’t stop filming until Nada felt empowered enough to face the world,” Tutorov explains. “She carries trauma — her mother was murdered, her father is the perpetrator — but she’s surrounded by strength.”
“We believe she’s ready now,” Glomazić adds. “Resilient.”
The decision to center women is also a political intervention in Montenegrin storytelling traditions.
“Our history glorifies male warriors,” he says. “Women were always in the shadows — though they were the backbone of society. This is one of the first international stories from Montenegro told through women’s strength rather than men’s heroics. We wanted to turn that hierarchy upside down.”
The film’s painterly imagery — women on horseback, silhouetted against vast alpine light — reinforces that reframing.
“Because we filmed over seven years, we could wait for the right light,” Tutorov says. “Sometimes we thought of Rembrandt. Biblical light. Old master paintings.”
“We were like fishermen,” Glomazić adds. “Waiting for the image.”
Shaping that imagery in the edit required rethinking conventional documentary structure.
“Our first edit approached the material anthropologically — almost colonially,” Tutorov explains. “It wasn’t our vision. We started over.”
They later collaborated with editor George Cragg, who understood their dramatic ambitions.
“We wanted resonance — not ethnography, not true crime,” she says. “Though we had material for that. The challenge was building the invisible characters — the mother and the mountain.”
In a rare convergence of art and impact, the real-world struggle documented in the film ended in victory — after the filmmakers had initially locked picture.
“We reopened the edit,” Tutorov says. “It was important to show that democratic battles — even unlikely ones — can succeed.”
For Glomazić, that outcome carries global relevance.
“People need hope,” he says. “We fought without illusions of winning — but we knew we had to try. And in the end, we won.”
What do they hope audiences carry with them?
“I don’t want to be too explicit,” Tutorov reflects. “When films explain too much, people absorb and move on. I want the emotions — Gara and Nada’s bond — to stay with audiences. To open reflection.”
And, perhaps, to inspire action grounded not in spectacle — but in care.
Because in “To Hold a Mountain,” heroism isn’t loud. It’s lived daily — in labor, in love, and in the refusal to let a homeland disappear.
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