Rising around the city of Bergamo in Northern Italy, the alpine pastures of the Orobie Pre-Alps give life to a pastoral existence shaped by repetition and the rhythms of nature. Honoring a centuries-old practice in an increasingly unstable climate marked by late snow and sharp temperature spikes, the Mussetti family continue as they always have, while slowly bending their practice to the shifting seasons – bringing their cows to high pasture each summer, and milking at altitude to produce cheese.

Filming in close proximity with the family and their two children, Italian filmmaker Giulio Squillacciotti builds an allegorical portrait of a season spent in Lombardy’s highlands for the short documentary Mut – taken from local dialect for mountain. Shot over a week, but condensed to span a single day, the film captures the region’s cinematic surroundings, where humans, animals, and landscape merge as a shared presence – suggesting a mountain that is not observed but inhabited and heard.