The mountains of Montenegro are the backdrop for a fight over family, tradition, and the future in To Hold a Mountain, the award-winning documentary directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić.
Set on the remote Sinjajevina plateau, the film follows Gara, a determined shepherd and cheesemaker, and her 13-year-old daughter Nada as they defend their ancestral grazing land against plans to establish a NATO military training ground.
Featuring Mileva Gara Jovanović and Nada Stanišić, the documentary brings together an intimate mother-and-daughter story with a larger struggle over environmental protection, militarization, and women’s rights.
The film made its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary, and screened at Millennium Docs Against Gravity (Grand Prize), Sarajevo (Best Documentary), True/False, CPH:DOX, Camden, Full Frame, Hot Docs, and BFI London, among other festivals. It was selected as the Montenegrin entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.
To Hold a Mountain is slated to open in U.S. theaters on December 16, 2026, at New York’s Film Forum before expanding to additional American cities.
The highlands of Montenegro are the breathtaking setting for this story of mother Gara and teenage daughter Nada, who tend to sheep and cows, gather herbs, and make cheese every summer. The Sinjajevina plateau is a remote, sacred, ancestral pasture, yet the modern world intrudes in the form of an incongruous government plan to install a NATO military shooting range there. Filming over seven years, co-directors Tutorov and Glomazić vividly capture the indefatigable efforts of Gara to cultivate support from her neighbors to guard the land that benefits them all, as Nada learns hard truths about her family’s history.
Watch the official trailer for To Hold a Mountain above.
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