11/08/2023
The film which was made over three years came to DokuFest, with screenings on Tuesday and Thursday, to reveal a piece of the life of some young people who start every day with the idea of getting rich.
In Burkina Faso a teenager is forced to choose a different life than those expected for young people, whether in Africa or anywhere in the world. These young people dig every day hundreds of meters underground to find a piece of hope, a piece of gold, to end their extreme poverty.
The film 'A Golden Life' compares the world of cinematography with the painful reality of young people who enter a difficult path with nothing to lose. To dive into the depths of the underground to discover a new life for the future, these young men have each other's back, being a permanent support even in failures.
When asked after the film about why all the participants in the film are so natural in front of the camera, the director Boubacar Sangaré, confesses the time he spent with these people and that the presence of the cameraman (only one cameraman shoots the entire film) becomes so unnoticeable that the characters don't mind showing their everyday life.
The noise, the dust, the sweat of the participating characters, food in unclean places, life on the edge of apocalypse, and many other elements that have the power to reach the public, are softened in one form or another with the rare camera footage that captures the occasional smile, sunset and peaceful night views.
The dreams of each participant are clear, they want a better life, a life where they are not forced to work so hard to earn so little.
Even after 3 years of digging in search of gold, the teenager manages to be rewarded very little, he will never find the gold he hopes for, and as he says he will not have that much money - even though money is never enough.
The life there and the details that are captured in the young people who sacrifice school and their desires to reach something, anything, puts us in a parallel of pain, and suffering together with them.
The key character of the documentary film is observed over the years as he changes his views, from a boy full of will and desire to a young man who begins to ask himself questions if all this is worth it and if all this has a price.
At the very end in the closing scene, the play of four characters (one of them the director himself) manifests hope as the only bait to escape. The greatest escape is not in what is being sought, nor in the deep tunnels of excavations, but the hope is there in their faces, in their eyes, in the unknown tomorrow.
By: Valona Hasani
Photo: Malda Lika
