A Golden Life

Boubacar Sangaré films Rasmané, a young, sixteen-year-old Burkinabé who prospects rudimentary mines in the hope of finding gold. We understand that these sites, which are found downstream of other extraction sites, force the boy to go ever deeper. But as he descends into the entrails of the earth, camera in hand, the film manages to pull off the remarkable feat of showing, in an almost proportional way, the hope of a better life that the boy strives on. Whilst the traces of childhood – remindful of Antoine Doinel – shown by Rasmané are still prominent, and the adults that surround him are rather benevolent, the feeling of a dead-end is ever more poignant, although never harrowing. FM