To Hold a Mountain and Ba’s Book will serve as the opening night and closing night selections, respectively, of this year’s RIDM. The Montreal doc festival announced the selections in its latest wave of programming updates.
To Hold a Mountain, directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, takes audiences to the hills of Montenegro where a farmer and her niece weather dual threats as NATO makes plan to establish a training site in the region and a man from the past threatens to return. The documentary debuted earlier this year to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema. The film kicks off RIDM on November 19.
“To Hold a Mountain is a trace of our seven-year-long journey and friendship with the herding community in the Sinjajevina mountains of Montenegro,” the filmmaker said in a statement. “It’s been an amazing adventure to share days with Gara and Nada — an adventure that changed our lives. We hoped this film could also bring new experiences to its viewers. It’s a work of love that contemplates love as a possible political tool. In this spirit, we are thrilled and honoured to open RIDM, one of the finest documentary festivals around.”
Meanwhile, Ba’s Book, directed by Ashley Da-Lê Duong, has its homecoming with a Quebec premiere at the festival. The documentary, which has its world premiere at TIFF shortly, observes as Duong adapts dramatic interpretation of her father’s memoir while capturing vérité-style segments of his return to Vietnam. (Subscribe today to read more about Ba’s Book in the upcoming issue of POV.)
“The whole team is honoured that Ba’s Book was selected as the closing film of RIDM — it feels like coming home!” exclaimed Duong in a release. “RIDM has been such a nurturing force for my work over the years, from their Doc Lab Montréal, Rough Cut Pitch, and even their Docs-In-Progress – Canadian Showcase at Cannes Docs. We can’t wait to show our ambitious, quirky, and heartfelt film to our friends, family, and community here in Montreal.”
RIDM previously announced selections for this year’s festival including Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney and Karl Lemieux’s Platform. RIDM runs Nov. 19 to 29.
