The Volunteers: Mountain Rescue Brings Us Home
Produced and co-directed by Dr. Mark Weiner

Free—first come, first served

The Volunteers explores big philosophical and political issues through an unlikely subject: mountain rescue. The documentary is not an adventure film but rather is a philosophical meditation.

The underlying premise is that mountain rescue organizations offer a positive, inspiring way of thinking about civic life, especially the relation between local attachment to place and universal human solidarity, that can help us transcend our political differences. We specifically explore the connection between two mountain rescue organizations, one in Seattle, Washington, the other in Tyrol, Austria. This connection ultimately runs through World War II, and Nazism, and their lessons for civic life today.

2024, U.S., DCP, in English and German with English subtitles, 105 minutes. Recommended for 15+

Includes a post-screening discussion with producer and co-director Dr. Mark Weiner moderated by Dr. Charles Ziegler

Co-presented with the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and the Department of Political Science, Liberal Studies Visiting Scholars Project, and the German Program in Classical and Modern Languages.