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In past years, visitors to the annual Mimesis Documentary Festival have had opportunities to appreciate the beauty of the nearby mountains when they arrive in Boulder.����

But this year, the films they will watch will challenge the audience to imagine those mountains as potential sites for nuclear waste storage.����

As Mimesis returns to Boulder for its seventh year in a row, it will call to mind the atomic age right from the start with Casey Carter's first feature film, To Use a Mountain, which took him nearly seven years to complete.����

"It's about six different sites across the country that were all candidates for a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste," Carter said.����

Carter's inspiration came from Department of Energy reports on possible nuclear waste depository sites. To Use A Mountain aims to bring awareness to the longer-term impacts of nuclear waste on communities. It also shows the hidden connection between these communities through shared challenges and experiences.����

What intrigued Carter was that many of the DOE reports overlooked the most important factor about the site locations.��

“There were no human stories," Carter said. "That became the seed for the film."��

On closing night, meanwhile, Mimesis will premiere Off Country, ending the festival with a long-awaited examination of the American West’s nuclear landscape by Taylor Dunne and Eric Stewart.��

Eric Coombs Esmail, the faculty director of the Center for Documentary Media at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder's College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, said the festival’s focus on the atomic West emerged from a common theme in many submissions to this year’s event.����

For the 2026 festival, Coombs Esmail said, Mimesis received more than 300 submissions, selecting about 50 for its showcase.����

“We're becoming a selective festival," he said.����

Mimesis showcases a full week of screenings, including Carter's film and many other talented filmmakers, along with community networking opportunities and artist workshops. This year, an audio hike at Rocky Flats—a former nuclear weapons manufacturing site outside Arvada—is part of the agenda, as well.����

Dana Cavalina, a Ukrainian illustrator, animator and filmmaker, is the festival's artist of focus. Her work, which is renowned for its intense emotions, will be portrayed through a series of shorts using collage and stop-motion methods.��

"She's doing a workshop on animation in documentary, how to use animation as a way of historical necromancy, bringing history back from the dead and reanimating it," Coombs Esmail said. "I think it will take people for quite a ride."����

Mimesis isn't, of course, the only film festival in town—Sundance will formally arrive in January. Coombs Esmail said this event is notable because it has long offered direct connections between viewers and creators that benefit both people who attend and the artists showcasing their work.��

"Everyone around you is a maker," he said, "Anyone you meet at Mimesis may become someone who makes or breaks your career."

It’s a sentiment Carter echoed.����

"Building relationships with your peers who are interested in the same things that you're interested in—that's a huge part of being a filmmaker, being an artist," he said. "It's important to be part of a community and surround yourself with other people who are producing art that inspires you.”��