“I’m the daughter of Sinjajevina,” says Mileva “Gara” Jovanović in To Hold a Mountain as she stands firm to protect the state from taking over the aforementioned UNESCO-protected land. After Montenegro’s accession to NATO in 2017, there was an interest in using the land for military training purposes. The proposal was later shut down – and still is, for now. This new documentary filmed over seven years, written and directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, has just enjoyed its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. The two filmmakers focus on Gara and her teenage daughter, Nada Stanišić, and zoom in more on the personal, rather than on the overtly political. However, the two throughlines are, of course, innately intertwined.

The interpersonal thread is unravelled as we learn that Nada’s biological mother, Mika, was killed by her husband – or, at least, he was heavily implicated in her death – when Nada was very young. Gara, Mika’s sister, took Nada in as her own daughter while keeping Mika’s memory alive through stories. Tutorov and Glomazić thus craft a powerful story of maternal care and matriarchal lineage that connects humans and nature as inseparable, disrupting that very Enlightenment-influenced duality engraved in our thinking that uplifts human exploitation of nature, rather than coexistence and mutual benefit.

The filmmakers were both heavily involved with the producing process through their own companies. However, it’s clear also through the close framing and spontaneous moments they capture that the directors know this story intimately. (Glomazić and Gara are both vice-presidents of the Save Sinjajevina Civic Initiative, fighting to protect the mountain, but neither the film nor the filmmakers go to great lengths to hide the connection.) They are able to maintain such smooth access as a result of this, as is cinematographer Eva Kraljević, whose camerawork seems to fluctuate according to the mood and environment of each scene.

In one extraordinarily intimate sequence, Gara and Nada tenderly huddle up together under a duvet to keep warm in their small mountain home, musing over things that realistically only the two of them would really know. In another, they search frantically for Nada’s cow, which has just given birth, high up on the mountain. Music throughout the film is slight and gentle, refusing to intrude emotionally upon the moments captured on screen. Images, Tutorov and Glomazić seem to say, are the clearest forms of witnessing here.

Although helicopters circle like hawks over the mountains, scenes that viewers might see as so-called “active” protest are actually few and far between: Gara makes a speech through a megaphone at a community event and also goes on the news to directly confront a military officer on a talk show. To Hold a Mountain is much more a personal documentary concerned about the structures of oppression: the same forces that threaten the land also threaten the people. While it takes slightly longer than expected for all of the themes to fully come together, the viewer discovers, by the end, a real meaning behind both persistence and resistance. It’s not all big fights and shows of force. Sometimes, resistance simply means staying put.

To Hold a Mountain is a production by Wake Up Films (Serbia), Les Films de l’oeil sauvage (France), Ardor Films (Montenegro) and Cvinger Film (Slovenia), in co-production with Kinematograf (Croatia) and RTV Slovenija (Slovenia).