‘To Use a Mountain’ Trailer – Casey Carter Revisits Fight Against Nuclear Dumping Grounds in Timely Documentary

A legal and environmental crisis unfolds when six rural communities in the United States were notified that they were candidates for a nuclear dumping ground.

Directed by Casey Carter, the documentary To Use a Mountain assembles a people’s history of resistance and stewardship through a journey of the candidate sites.

The documentary world premiered at Visions du Réel in Switzerland, where it won a Special Jury Award, then went on to screen at the Dallas International Film Festival, DOXA (Vancouver), ParaDOXA Forum IDFA, Big Sky, and many more. It will open theatrically at DCTV in New York on Friday, August 21 with a regional theatrical expansion to follow. VOD release (via Grasshopper Film) will occur in 2027.

In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation’s nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever.

Faced with a mandate to isolate the waste for 10,000 years, the Department of Energy mapped, analyzed, and assembled its assessments, while the unsuspecting stewards of sacrificial territory found themselves fighting for their homes, health, history, and dignity.

In the end, one site was chosen: a desert ridge in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, on the unceded lands of the Western Shoshone. After decades of controversy, construction at Yucca Mountain was halted, and to this day, no permanent solution has been devised for America’s 90,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Against the impassive logic of government analysis and archives, To Use a Mountain assembles a people’s history of resistance and stewardship through a visceral journey across the landscapes, ecologies, and personal histories of the candidate sites. Farmers, miners, citizen scientists, Native American leaders, and activists—each with a story bound to this enduring threat—stand in stark contrast to the cold, silent machinery of bureaucracy, in a meditation on resistance, memory, and the timeless struggle between power and place.

“When I began making this film in 2018, there was no war in Ukraine, no war in Iran, no threat to resume U.S. nuclear weapons testing, and no data-center development craze driving a so-called nuclear renaissance. But the waste was already there, and every year there is more. This film is a citizen’s inquiry and a people’s history of a story yet to conclude,” said filmmaker Casey Carter.

Watch the official trailer for To Use a Mountain.