To Hold A Mountain
Presented By The Sonoma International Film Festival
December 2nd
Doors at 6:15pm
Show at 7pm
To Hold a Mountain is an intimate, multilayered portrait of a mother and daughter living on Montenegro’s Sinjajevina plateau, one of Europe’s last great pastoral highlands. Each summer, Gara and her 13-year-old daughter Nada return to their ancestral pastures at 2,000 meters, where they herd animals, gather herbs, and live in symbiosis with the mountain they call “Mother.” Their days follow the ancient rhythms of transhumance, a tradition handed down through generations of local women.
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. As helicopters descend and the community fractures under pressure, Gara emerges as an unexpected leader — riding her white horse across the highlands to unite neighbors and defend the land that sustains them.
For Nada, the fight for Sinjajevina intertwines with a more private struggle. Gara is not her biological mother but her aunt, who raised her after Nada’s mother was murdered by her father. As Nada grows into young womanhood, the encroaching violence on the land awakens questions about her past, her future, and the cycle of harm she hopes to break.
Filmed over seven seasons, To Hold a Mountain weaves an environmental drama with a deeply human story of care, resilience and the quiet resistance of women in a patriarchal society. The
film reveals how the threads of motherhood, land stewardship and survival are bound together — and how the fight to protect a mountain can become a fight to heal a family.
