The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign may be celebrating the defeat of the 100th coal plant since 2001, but the fight against coal is only just beginning. Never has this been clearer than in the new documentary Coal Country, which premieres on Saturday in Charleston, West Virginia.

The film, produced and directed by Appalachia natives Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, is careful to present a balanced view of the debate over coal mining, and the destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining (MTR) in particular. Figures on both sides of the “war zone” (as activist Judy Bond calls the contested areas) are given a chance to tell their stories in the film. So why was Big Coal reportedly threatening to protest Saturday’s screening? 

Big Coal is scared, and rightfully so. By allowing coal advocates to express their views in the film, the filmmakers got Big Coal to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets—the stuff they don’t want anyone to know, because if you did know, you’d probably jump on the next plane to West Virginia to put an end to this tragedy yourself.

So the cat is officially out of the bag, and Big Coal is suddenly extremely nervous about the ramifications of this film. It is so nervous, in fact, that the coal advocacy group Friends of Coal was reportedly trying to picket Saturday’s screening. Their scare tactics seemed to be working, as the South Charleston Museum, which was originally set to host the premiere, announced earlier this week that it was canceling the event due to concerns over “a potential security problem.”

Fortunately, the screening has been relocated to the Cultural Center at the Capitol Complex in Charleston, so the show will go on. But the real issue here is the coal industry using its might to bully the residents of coal country into keeping their mouths shut about the devastating reality of coal mining. West Virginia may be one of the poorest states in the nation in terms of dollars, but the state is also home to some of the world’s most beautiful and bio-diverse ecosystems, which are being promptly destroyed by MTR, and, most importantly, it is home to thousands of people who are being literally suffocated by the toxic byproducts of coal mining. The situation is a human rights violation, and the fact that the coal industry is trying so desperately to keep the truth under wraps only serves to further this point. If they didn’t have so much to hide, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to hide it.  

In the end, the truth will come out, and it will spell the end of the coal industry. The question is, how much longer will Big Coal be able to stifle the voices of the people? From the looks of Coal Country, it appears the answer is not much longer. Props to Evans and Geller and all the brave individuals who testified in the film—it’s high time your story is heard.