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What does it take to hold a multinational to account? Esther Kiobel’s husband Dr. Barinem Kiobel was one of the nine men executed in 1995 after revolting against Shell’s pollution of Ogoniland, Nigeria. Almost 25 years later, Esther takes Shell to court in the Netherlands.

‘He was a peacemaker,’ Esther Kiobel says about her husband Barinem, one of the ‘Ogoni 9’. In the early 1990s, the Ogoni people revolted against Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta. While Shell and its stakeholders profited from the huge revenues, the oil extractions devastated fertile farming land and fishing waters, plunging the once prosperous Ogoni people into dire poverty. In a trial flawed with irregularities, nine Ogoni leaders were sentenced to death. Esther is convinced Shell was involved in the executions. But can she prove it?

We follow Esther from Dallas (US), where she now lives, to Ogoniland where she is trying to mobilise witnesses for her court case against Shell. In the Dutch courtroom, Esther is flanked by a committed team of lawyers, led by Channa Samkalden. But they face the extremely difficult task of having to prove that Shell bribed witnesses. The trial brings up a lot of old emotions.