World Premerie of Overburden: Film Screening and Filmmaker Talkback

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OVERBURDEN is set in the mist-shrouded Nimba Mountains on the Liberia–Guinea border, where rare wildlife and local communities reclaim a landscape scarred by mining. Today, this fragile recovery faces a new threat: a global steel company using conservation promises to brand a new mining venture as green.

With exclusive, on-the-ground access, OVERBURDEN follows rangers, scientists, and forest defenders—like Moses Darpey, a hunter turned ranger—as they navigate the tangled frontier where mining meets conservation, and where memory, science, and power collide. The film captures intimate encounters with the mountain’s extraordinary inhabitants, from a viviparous toad found nowhere else on earth to resilient cave-dwelling bats and adaptive chimpanzees.

OVERBURDEN tells a powerful story of resilience and transformation in a landscape shaped by industry yet alive with possibility. Through vivid cinematography and deeply rooted storytelling, the film follows communities and nature enduring and adapting in the face of relentless global forces. OVERBURDEN celebrates the power of mutual aid, showing how people and ecosystems persist, rebuild, and thrive against overwhelming odds.

After the screening, there will be a talkback involving David Wilcove (Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and the School of Public and International Affairs), historian of science Gregg Mitman (Creative Producer), and conservation biologist Shadrach Kerwillain (cast member).
Overburden is an Official Selection for the Princeton Environmental Film Festival 2026.
This is the world premiere.

Credits: Alchemy Films, LTD. and Toad and Mountain Productions, LLC. Director: Sarita West. Creative Producer: Gregg Mitman. Cinematographers: Alexander Wiaplah, Ester De Roij. Editor: Evelyn Franks. Motion Graphics Design: Josh Earle. Composers: Eric Antonio and Tito Marshall Gomez.

Sponsored by the Environmental Humanities Colloquium; History of Science, Department of History; High Meadows Environmental Institute; and the Center for Health and Wellbeing.

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Co-hosted with: Africa World Initiative, Department of History Undergraduate Program

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