To Use a Mountain

Carter, C. (Director). Cassingham, C. and McKone, J (Producers). (2025). To Use a Mountain. The Video Project. 99 mins. Casey Carter’s To Use a Mountain explores the U.S. government’s search, launched in 1982 by the Department of Energy and never concluded, for a rural community under which to bury all of the nation’s nuclear waste. Weaving together policy documents, data visualizations, found footage, and a long-haul personal tour of the finalist sites, To Use a Mountain is one of the most thought-provoking, stylistically innovative, and balanced documentaries in recent years to tackle complex issues around environmental justice, nuclear policy, and community voice. Belying the filmmaker’s interdisciplinary background in physics, architecture, and photography, the film offers a prismatic set of inroads and back roads to understanding the history, present, and future ramifications of U.S. nuclear development, armament and warfare, waste, and energy, focusing on the local communities most affected. As with any film about nuclear science and environmental injustice, To Use a Mountain is heavy – heavy as the uranium enriched to kill hundreds of thousands, heavy as the ecosystems polluted by its development and waste runoff, heavy as the burden carried by communities displaced and poisoned in the name of national security. Yet, Carter’s unique formal combination of avant garde cinematography, sound design and editing, direct-address inclusion of community members and Indigenous voices often marginalized from such narratives, and methodically sweeping policy documentation offer a rare balance of the discomfort we should feel with this history and an unbiased engagement often unachieved in such documentaries. Ultimately, To Use a Mountain paints a poignant landscape between unfinished history and forever-becoming present, around a scientific, environment, and ethical issue that continues to be prominent in various debates around energy, economy, and technology. The filmmaker does not lead us by the nose, nor champion with politicians or specific community groups – instead, we are given a wide array of information and perspectives, even at times implicating the filmmaker in the extractive history of white settler colonialism that led to the use of sacred Indigenous land for the testing of the most destructive means this species has concocted. Even then, though, the film does not flinch – but instead allows those historically displaced, genocided, and silenced to speak directly to the viewer. This is, without a doubt, a challenging film – as was Hiroshima, mon amour (one cannot help but think of the long genealogy of crucial screen texts around the issue of nuclear destruction) – as should be any film about an extremely problematic and complex topic that has an abundance of already-existing sensitive footage and documentation and has traditionally been whitewashed for public comfort. Having watched it multiple times, screened it in undergraduate classrooms on Ecocinema and spotlighting it to kick off a campus-wide Teach-in on Sustainability, I can attest that it is received with acute historical curiosity and deep artistic appreciation. And the filmmaker is able to meet questions and expand conversations around the film’s aesthetics and narrativity and the science, ethics, and policy of nuclear science in a way most cannot – because he has done the research and because he cares about those affected and potentially affected, two qualities that most deeply anchor the film. Awards:Winner of Special Jury Award, International Feature Film Competition, Visions du Réel International Film Festival Nyon; Winner of Feature Documentary Award, Honorable Mention, DOXA Documentary Film Festival