Håvard Bustnes’ illuminating documentary Let Our Mountains Live is both a fascinating courtroom and advocacy drama that offers major food for thought as we enter into the next inevitable stages of global energy wars and crises. A focused film that’s able to distill a lot of complex issues surrounding government deals and indigenous sovereignty into an expertly assembled package, Let Our Mountains Live will provoke necessary thought in all who view it.
In collaboration with Sámi filmmakers Johannes Vang and Kati Eriksen, Bustnes examines a long running court battle between the Norwegian government and reindeer herders fighting to protect their ancestral lands. Led by representatives and reindeer herders Sissel Storme Holtan and Terje Haugen, indigenous Sámi peoples push back against a large wind turbine farm that has been placed on their land without adequate consultation or care for what it would do to their way of life. The over 150 turbines have been placed in the one area of mountains in and around Fosen that doesn’t freeze over in winter; a necessary place for animals to graze. In 2021, the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled that that turbines’ locations are a human rights violation. But instead of removing or relocating the turbines, the Norwegian government does nothing and remains silent, backed by the major energy and banking titans that helped fund their construction. When young Sámi protestors staged a non-violent sit-in in 2024, they were physically removed and then sued by the government.
Let Our Mountains Live bounces back and forth between the protests, efforts to protect the land being carried out by Holtan and Haugen and the ongoing trial of the protestors, and it’s a credit to the filmmaking team’s vision that everything lines up perfectly. The scholarship on display and skillful editing helps unfamiliar viewers keep pace with a wide ranging issue that speaks to the sometimes dubious nature of capital projects (even those with aims to produce cleaner energy) and the continued vanishing and encroaching upon indigenous spaces.
The frustration felt by Holtan, Haugen, and those they represent is palpable, and with each broken promise or refusal to act on the part of the Norwegian government, the viewer’s blood will boil further and the sighs of disbelief grow louder. But Let Our Mountains Live showcases exactly how these situations arise when necessary steps aren’t taken to consult on major projects in the first place (which makes it even more bleakly comedic when the government tries to insist they need to do more research as a stalling technique). It’s an unassuming but important case study that also carves out space for a plenty of unfiltered human emotion.
Let Our Mountains Live was screened as part of the 2026 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
