2026

Bonded

In Cooke City, Montana, Joey Weamer navigates life as a rookie backcountry ski guide at 47, reflecting on an unconventional life shaped by young fatherhood and the son he grew up right alongside.

Currently on the 2026 - 2027 Festival Circuit

Please enjoy the TRAILER!

Official Poster

Artwork: Mike Swim

Synopsis 

Joey Weamer never did things the way you were supposed to. A 47-year-old rookie backcountry ski guide who has carved out a life around Cooke City, Montana, a town so small it counts its residents at 77. At 19, Joey had one plan: go pro, ride hard, and make a life out of chasing winter. Then he learned he was going to have a son, and the life he had mapped out quietly gave way to a different one. While his friends drifted through their twenties as ski bums, Joey was learning to be a father, cobbling together odd jobs, growing up in real time alongside his son Alex, and growing into a person he never saw coming.

Decades later, after witnessing a devastating avalanche accident that shook something loose in him, Joey finds his way back to the mountains professionally. Not in his twenties like most guides, but at 47, stubbornly and beautifully on his own timeline. At the center of all of it is Maggie, the woman who has walked every chapter of this life with him, every detour included.

Then Joey becomes a grandfather at 47. One of the youngest grandpas you'll ever meet. And something shifts. The mountains he once treated as a proving ground, a place to gatekeep and push limits and stake his identity, become something else entirely. A place to share. To pass on. To simply be in.

Credits

Directed by Mitch Milbauer

Producer Kaiden Hancock | Director of Photography Mitch Milbauer

Editor Olivia Gorham

Aerial Cinematography Elliot Harrison

Director’s Statement

I didn't set out to make a film about fatherhood. I set out to make a film about my friend Joey, a rookie backcountry guide at 47, in a town most people drive past without noticing. It took a few years of friendship before I got to fully understand Joey's story.

Joey was 19 and chasing a career as a professional snowboarder when he found out he was going to be a father. His friends kept living like kids. He didn't get to. He raised his son, Alex, on a timeline nobody would have chosen for him. It changed how I think about my own and about what "on time" even means, and who decided we should all be racing the same clock.

Making this film meant earning trust long before I earned footage. And just when I thought I'd finally understood Joey's story, a late-blooming guide, finally settling in, his life proved me wrong again.

I made Bonded as a friend of Joey's, and because Montana is full of people quietly rewriting their own timelines. I hope this one makes people a little kinder to theirs.