Movie
To Use a Mountain
Narrative tropes
Rebels vs. The Empire
highSix rural communities (small, outmatched) face the federal DOE (vast authority) unilaterally designating their land as sacrifice zones. Farmers, miners, and Western Shoshone leaders are portrayed sympathetically as brave resisters. The government is shown as dehumanizing through its 'impassive bureaucratic logic.' Partial victory is achieved: Yucca Mountain construction was halted after sustained community resistance.
About this trope: A small outmatched group rises up against a massive oppressive regime or institutional power. The rebellion is framed as morally righteous.
Good Intentions, Terrible Results
highThe government's plan is internally logical—nuclear waste genuinely must go somewhere—and framed as a public safety necessity. Yet its execution designates 'sacrifice zones' among communities that had no role in producing the waste and no voice in the decision. The film's formal contrast between impassive legal text and human testimony shows how bureaucratic certainty of being right is itself the danger. Communities are forced to resist a program ostensibly solving a real crisis.
About this trope: A villain — or sometimes a hero — genuinely believes they are doing the right thing, but their well-meaning plan leads to monstrous outcomes. The scariest antagonists think they're saving the world.
Cultural messages
The System Is Rigged
highThe DOE—an institution mandated to serve public safety—is shown as willfully negligent, making site decisions without community input while ignoring concerns about cancer spikes, contaminated cropland, and stillborn births. The formal device of overlaying government text against community voices exposes the gap between institutional claims and lived harm. Communities must organize outside official channels; the problem ultimately goes unresolved, confirming the system cannot fix itself.
About this message: Institutions meant to protect people — governments, corporations, law enforcement, the justice system — are depicted as corrupt, incompetent, or actively harmful. Heroes must work outside official channels.
Movies that share these tropes
Full plot (spoilers)
In 1982, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act set in motion a federal mandate to permanently isolate the nation's high-level radioactive waste—roughly 77,000 to 90,000 tons—for a period of 10,000 years. The Department of Energy conducted geological surveys and assembled bureaucratic assessments to identify candidate burial sites, ultimately notifying six rural communities across Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Nevada that their land might become that sacrifice zone. The documentary follows what happened next in each of those communities, assembling a people's history from the ground up. Through archival footage, landscape cinematography, and interviews with farmers, miners, citizen scientists, and Native American leaders, the film documents the distress and organized resistance that erupted when residents learned of the government's plans. Concerns voiced by community members include the contamination of cropland, spikes in cancer rates, stillborn births attributed to radiation exposure, and the multi-generational consequences of a decision made entirely without their input. Director Casey Carter uses a formal device of overlaying on-screen legal and government text against these community voices, drawing a sharp contrast between the impassive logic of bureaucratic analysis and the lived reality of the people targeted. The film treats radiation not as a discrete disaster but as an ongoing, invisible threat—a slow erosion of bodies and landscapes that resists easy documentation. After years of analysis, the DOE selected Yucca Mountain in Nevada—a desert ridge on the unceded territory of the Western Shoshone Nation—as the single chosen site. Despite decades of political and legal controversy following that selection, construction at Yucca Mountain was eventually halted, leaving the underlying problem of permanent nuclear waste disposal unresolved. The film closes on this unresolved present, framing the entire episode as a meditation on the collision of federal power and local place, and on the scientific responsibility gap in which communities uninvolved in the original decisions are left to inherit the consequences.
Sources: TMDb overview, touseamountain.com (official site), icsfilm.org (Visions du Réel 2025 review), labocine.com, WebSearch aggregate (Deadline, Letterboxd, Beyond Nuclear, SEJ listings)