‘To Hold A Mountain’ To Open In U.S. Theaters In December

EXCLUSIVE: To Hold a Mountain, the Sundance award-winning documentary that’s a strong contender for Oscar recognition, will soon reach U.S. theaters.

Submarine Deluxe announced it will open the film directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić on December 16 at Film Forum in New York, with a national rollout to follow. The documentary – chosen by Montenegro as its candidate for Best International Feature Film at the 99^th Academy Awards – is set to premiere on HBO and HBO Max in early 2027.

The film, set in the magnificent highlands of Montenegro’s Sinjajevina plateau, centers on Gara and her 13-year-old daughter Nada. As a synopsis notes, mother and daughter “return to their ancestral pastures every summer, where they herd animals, gather herbs, and live in symbiosis with the mountain they call ‘Mother.’ But their fragile world comes under threat when the Montenegrin government advances plans for a NATO-backed military training ground in the heart of this UNESCO protected landscape. Gara emerges as an unexpected leader in the fight to defend Sinjajevina but, as Nada grows into young womanhood, the encroaching violence on the land awakens questions about her past, her future, and the cycle of harm within her family she hopes to break.”

Watch the film’s trailer below.

To Hold a Mountain has been shortlisted for the IDA Documentary Awards and the European Film Awards. It will next screen at IDFA in Amsterdam and at DOC NYC after being named to the latter festival’s Short List of the year’s top Oscar contenders. At Sundance, where the film premiered, it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary. Among other prizes, it won the Grand Prix at Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland, Best Documentary Feature at the Sarajevo Film Festival, and the Jury Prize for Documentary Feature at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival. Tutorov and Glomazić won Best Documentary Directors at RiverRun in Winston-Salem, NC.

The couple, who are life partners and filmmaking partners, spent eight years making To Hold a Mountain.

“Nada was very young when we started filming, so we knew we would film for years,” Tutorov explained as she took part in a documentary round table event earlier this month at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas. “We knew that we wanted her to become 18 and to kind of accept or refuse what we are doing. And during that time, we could really observe all possible qualities of these relations [between mother and daughter].”

Gara is a nurturing presence not only to Nada but to the animals they both care for in the pastoral setting. She becomes a protector of the mountain, rallying her neighbors to oppose the government’s plan to turn it into a staging ground for military exercises. Gara lives in a deeply patriarchal culture, where violence by men can shatter the lives of women, yet as a matriarchal figure, Gara embodies qualities of Sinjajevina itself.

“The community calls the mountain ‘mother’ actually, because they’re very aware that it’s more than a resource. It’s their shelter, it’s their companion. They talk to the mountain,” Tutorov said. “[Gara’s] same love for land and for Nada is actually operating in this political background story. And so that’s what really became very interesting for us to, on one side, contemplate love as a possible political tool.”

To Hold a Mountain is directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić and produced by Biljana Tutorov. Additional producers are Petar Glomazić, Quentin Laurent, and Rok Biček. The film is edited by George Cragg. Cinematography is by Eva Kraljević, with sound design by Julij Zornik and Samo Jurca. The original score is by Draško Adžić.

Executive Producers are Megan Gelstein, Andrea Meditch, Jean Tsien, Bianca Oana, Petra Costa, Sean Flynn, Ben Fowlie, Lucila Moctezuma, Chandra Jessee and Rebecca Lichtenfeld for InMaat, Megha Agrawal Sood, Shanida Scotland, Julian Etienne, Meadow Fund, Julie Parker Benello, Jenni Wolfson, Monika Parekh, Grace Lay, and Jenny Warburg. The film is a production of Wake Up Films in co-production with Ardor Films, Les Films de l’oeil sauvage and Cvinger Film.

To Hold a Mountain will screen on November 17 as part of Deadline’s For the Love of Docs series (to RSVP, click here).

Watch the trailer for To Hold a Mountain here: