Rasmané, alias Bolo, 16, is a teenage gold miner at the Bantara site in Burkina Faso. Like all teenagers of his age, he is playful and dreamy. His daily routine is organised around cooking, working in the gallery and going down to dig at a depth of more than 100 metres. His hope hangs on a rope that ascends indefinitely from the depths. He hopes to find gold with which to build his future. But the long days of labour are fruitless. As time and his trials go by, his body changes, his features become more pronounced. Inside, he gradually loses his childhood innocence. When Rasmané finally obtains bags of ore, he transports them to the ‘yaar’, the ‘city’ built from scratch on the edge of the mines. There he meets Missa and Dramane, 12 and 13 years old, two cart-driving friends in charge of transporting the ore from the gold mines. They accompany Rasmané through the various stages of the ore’s transformation, until the long-awaited moment when the gold is turned into money.
Boubacar Sangaré is a filmmaker, author and director, from Burkina Faso. He has directed four short films and co-directed a feature documentary for TV.
A Golden Life is his first feature documentary for cinema. He is currently developing several other projects, including the road movie documentary Djéliya, Memory of Manding (selected for La Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde, in Cannes Film Festival 2022) and two feature-length fiction films: Le nom qu’on te donne and Les dieux délinquants.
