Film
To Hold a Mountain
Planina
In the Montenegrin highlands, a mother and daughter defend their ancestral mountain from being turned into a NATO training ground — tending livestock, making cheese and caring for one another and their land. A quietly observed documentary that won Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize.
About
To Hold a Mountain is a documentary by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić that premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize and earned a 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes. A co-production drawing together Serbia, France, Montenegro, Slovenia and Croatia, it is a work of patient observational nonfiction in the tradition of direct cinema.
The film settles into the daily rhythm of a mother and daughter living high in the Montenegrin mountains, who are resisting a plan to turn their ancestral land into a NATO military training ground. Tutorov and Glomazić watch them tend their livestock, make artisanal cheese and care for one another, allowing the political stakes to surface through the texture of ordinary work rather than commentary or confrontation. The result is unhurried, attentive and quietly resolute.
The Sundance jury called it "the truest example of the power of cinema to make the personal political," a citation that captures the film's method: it earns its argument about land, sovereignty and resistance by first earning our attachment to two women and a way of life. Among the most lauded European documentaries of the year, it marks Tutorov and Glomazić as formidable observers of the region's overlooked corners.
Top Cast
Mileva Gara Jovanović
Self
Nada Stanišić
Self
Awards, Festivals & Mentions
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Winner — Sundance World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize (2026)
