03/04/2023 - Boubacar Sangaré's first feature-length documentary follows a teenager mining for gold in Burkina Faso

The term “artisanal gold mining” can conjure up various images, but they will certainly be different from the reality that Burkinabe teenager Bolo is living in. Together with a group of friends, he is looking for gold at the Bantara site, where many young people have come to from all over Burkina Faso in the hope of improving their lives. Boubacar Sangaré follows Bolo for three years in his first documentary, A Golden Life [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which has screened at Movies That Matter, following its world premiere at the Berlinale.

Early on, we learn that Bolo's parents have few resources with which to keep him at home, being unable to support him financially. At the age of 16, he has come to Bantara and spends his days hacking away at the rocky walls in the narrow shaft, kneeling in the water. When he is not inside, he is at the mouth of the hole, helping a friend go down the rope or pulling up a bucket full of muddy earth, in which they hope to eventually spot a glimmer of the shiny metal. Or he is cooking beans, constantly looking for cigarettes, discussing music trends or spending the night in a bar – which we never see, but we do realise he sleeps in quite late in the tent.

We become closely acquainted with the whole subculture of artisanal gold mining which has exploded in Burkina Faso following the financial crisis. It is dangerous and back-breaking work: at one point, there is an explosion – probably from one of the generators used to pump out water. Several wide shots unveil a veritable anthill of tents where hundreds of people work. This is where Bolo and many others are growing up, and two other characters show us that even among the youngsters, there are different generations: Missa and Dramane are only 12 and 13, and they earn their meagre bit of money by pushing a cart that holds 50-kilo sacks of dug-out earth, which is taken to be milled before gold can be extracted from it.

The whole process is covered in this fully observational documentary, and from conversations between the miners, we find out why some of the shafts are more than 100 metres long and how some people spend more than two years there before they even see gold. There is a whole mythology connected to djinn, who decide if you will find gold based on whether they like you or not. And now the Bantara population has another fear besides the obvious physical dangers: white prospectors have arrived, and they have far superior resources to any of the locals.

But this is not a film about global injustices or even the hardships that African kids have to endure in order to have a relatively decent life. Rather, it is about coming of age, and it is easy to see that Bolo and his friends are no different from their peers around the world, except that they have had to grow up much faster than many. This is why the documentary has few amplitudes within its emotional register, but it makes up for it with its in-depth portrait of the central protagonist and well-researched social picture. More than 20 years ago, Sangaré was also a child gold miner in Bantara, so he is practically telling his own story as well.

Technically, it's an accomplished film with a sober distribution of well-rounded scenes, and a couple of sequences filmed inside the shaft with Bolo add some tension that is welcome in lieu of more eventful developments.

A Golden Life is a co-production by Burkina Faso's Imedia, Benin's Merveilles Productions and France's Les Films de la caravane. Prague-based Filmotor has the international rights.