We Won’t Let You Poison Us highlights the stories of three front line activists fighting to save our ecosystem: courageous woman lawyer and environmental activist Awula Serwah who takes officials to court, award-winning investigative journalist Erastus Asare Donkor who exposes corruption in the mining sector, and Father Joseph (JB) Blay, a Catholic priest who is indomitable in his fight to save his community from illegal mining. We also meet Patrick Danso, one of Father JB’s community members, and Professor Rose Mamaa Entusa-Mensah, whose research has been highlighting the effects of illegal mining on our soils and water bodies for decades.

Through their narratives, the film, set in Ghana, examines what freedom means when environmental destruction, climate stress, economic pressures and greed converge. In their diverse ways, Awula Serwaa, Erastus Donkor and Father JB show us how “ordinary citizens” working in solidarity with others, even in the face of severe challenges, can galvanise collective action to ensure our freedom to live.

Their activism answers the question: how do we protect this freedom when the fight is for the very air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink and fish in, and the soil that sustains us?