THE MOUNTAIN WON’T MOVE
Petra Seliškar / France, Macedonia, Slovenia / 2025 / 96 min / Colour
Zekir, Zarif, and Zani are three brothers from a Macedonian shepherding family. We meet them during the summer transhumance in the highlands of Macedonia. At 2,400 meters above sea level, they spend the season with their animals. The two eldest, Zekir and Zarif, are responsible for the sheep, watched over by massive guard dogs. Zani, from a hut further down the slope, tends to the cows. Between the older brothers there is both camaraderie and tension. Zekir is rough and quick-tempered; Zarif, more introspective and melancholic. Though they share the burden of shepherding, Zarif is troubled—he misses his dog Belichka, taken from him by a breeder in town, and he’s distracted by thoughts of a girl. The mountain life begins to wear on him, and his restlessness erupts into heated arguments with Zekir. Amid the vastness of the Macedonian highlands—under the sun, in swirling fog, or during storms that scatter the animals—one question lingers in the air: once they come of age, will these boys choose to remain shepherds?
Petra Seliškar
Born in Ljubljana in 1978, she later moved to the Netherlands to attend the Academy for Film and Television in Amsterdam. She specialized in Directing and Production at the Northern Media School in Sheffield, England. In 2003, she founded Petra Pan Film Production, which focuses on producing and distributing documentaries. Her film The Grandmothers of Revolution (2006) received awards at IDFA in Amsterdam, the Trieste Film Festival, Zagrebdox, and the Sarajevo Film Festival.
