In the mist-shrouded Nimba Mountains on the Liberia–Guinea border, 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.
About the filmmaker
Gregg Mitman is ERC Professor at LMU’s Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and William Coleman Emeritus Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and teacher, whose interests span the history of science, medicine, and the environment in the United States and the world and include a commitment to environmental and social justice.
At the Rachel Carson Center, he leads the ERC project Fragments of the Forest: Hot Zones, Disease Ecologies, and the Changing Landscapes of Environment and Health in West Africa.
For more information, visit Gregg's website.