Texaco drilled for oil in Ecuador's Amazon for decades, and the lawsuit over what it left behind became one of the largest environmental cases on record: a $27 billion claim, dubbed the Amazon Chernobyl case, against Chevron, which inherited Texaco's liabilities. Joe Berlinger spent three years filming the litigation in cinema-verite style, following plaintiffs' attorney Steven Donziger and the indigenous and mestizo communities who say contaminated water and soil have caused cancers and other illness across the rainforest. The camera also tracks Chevron's legal team and their argument that Ecuador's own state oil company, not Texaco, bears responsibility for the pollution. Courtroom maneuvering plays out alongside site visits to sludge pits and waterways, celebrity visits meant to raise the case's profile, and the slow grinding pace of a lawsuit that drags on for years without resolution. Berlinger keeps both sides on screen rather than settling the argument for the viewer, so the film reads less as advocacy than as a document of how a legal fight this size actually gets fought.