Davoll’s General Store, in South Dartmouth, will make its way to the big screen.

Fairhaven native Alyssa Botelho has finished production on “Sweet Freedom,” an independent, historical fiction short film that explores the true story of Afro-Indigenous abolitionist Mary “Polly” Johnson. 

Botelho served as the film’s writer, director, producer and has won two “student emmys” for her 2021 historical thriller “To Dust All Return” about the New England witch trials.

Botelho’s latest film,“Sweet Freedom,” takes place in 1839 when Johnson oversaw a refuge in New Bedford that sheltered people escaping slavery in the American South along a series of escape routes known collectively as the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass was among the people who passed through Johnson’s shelter.  

“Sweet Freedom” was filmed in New Bedford, Freetown, Marion and South Dartmouth and gathered community support from the New Bedford Historical Society, the Shepherd Center for the Performing Arts and New Bedford Creative.