Director Liz Smith

IT IS not just climate protesters at risk of arrest under new police powers, a filmmaker will warn on Saturday.

Director Liz Smith, who is making a documentary film about the “criminalisation of climate activists”, was arrested earlier this year when filming protesters on Coronation Day – despite playing no part in the protests herself.

At the London COP on Saturday, Ms Smith will show clips from her latest film as part of our final panel of the day. She will also discuss the “criminalisation” of peaceful protest, and the implications of her own arrest for press freedom.

She said: “I got arrested – it’s about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It’s about the vagueness of the [Public Order] Act and the abuse of police power.

“Broadly, the film is about the criminalisation of climate activists, and how the courts and the state are clamping down on them and the extended police powers we now have since the Public Order Act.”

The film, which has not yet been released, will explore three “core storylines”.

Ms Smith has followed Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, two protesters who are currently serving jail time after being handed down “the most extreme sentence for a climate protest” known to this country after climbing the Dartford Crossing.

Another tells the story of “the silencing of the activists in court – they’re being told they can’t tell the jury why they sat on the road, why they did what they did.”

Ms Smith will be joined by rapper and filmmaker Louis VI, whose album Earthling builds on the pivotal keynote speech he gave at the COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021 and makes use of nature field records from across the world.

The album was released to critical acclaim earlier this year, leading the Guardian to label him “one to watch”.

Also on the panel is novelist James Miller, author of Lost Boys and Sunshine State, and a founding member of Writers Rebel.