Fatou has always lived on the banks of the Gambia River. For her, the river is much more than a source of life: it is her home, her memory, and the invisible heartbeat that connects generations within her community. But this ancestral bond is facing a silent threat: the advance of saltwater, which puts the balance of a millennia-old ecosystem and the lives of the communities that depend on it at risk.

Voices of the Gambia River is a feature-length documentary that immerses us in this reality through an intimate and poetic journey where science and tradition come together to understand and confront one of the greatest environmental threats of our time: the salinization of freshwater.

The documentary is inspired by the scientific expedition of the SALBIA project, during which a team of scientists and river ecology experts travelled along the Gambia River to study the effects of salinization on the ecosystem, biodiversity, and riverside communities.
Through Fatou’s story, we discover a race against time to protect not only an ecosystem, but also a way of life, a culture, and the legacy of a river that has sustained generations.