Film no.6 Reves de Poussiere

Reves de Poussiere, Laurent Salgues, Burkina Faso, France, 2006

From France, Canada and Burkina Faso, French writer-director Laurent Salgues’s Rêves de poussière is a vivid depiction of hard labor, sustained by hopes for a better future, and poverty. Mocktar, a Nigerian farmer, has just lost his youngest daughter. Burdened by guilt for inadequately providing for wife and family, he travels to northeast Burkina Faso to work in the gold mines. An official explains, “The gold rush is over.” His response gets Mocktar hired: “I’m just looking for a job.” The film opens with an extreme long-shot of sand being blown by wind screen-right across the landscape. A human figure enters the frame and proceeds, by foot, screen-left—in the face of the wind. This is Mocktar symbolically braving life’s misfortunes. Neocolonialist exploitation of African resources and peasants contributes to African poverty. “The gold we risk our lives for,” Mocktar himself notes later on, “is for white people.” At the camp, Mocktar is attracted to Coumba, who has lost family members in a shaft collapse there, and whose young daughter Mocktar helps with his pay, redeeming himself from guilt over his own recent loss. At the last, in an extreme long-shot, he is shown journeying home. -Dennis Grunes

With his deeply cathartic and intransigent drama Dreams of Dust, Laurent Salgues takes an unflinching look at life in a hellish African gold-mining community. For countless hours, days and weeks on end, the employees of a mining camp burrow long tunnels into the sand in search of increasingly elusive nuggets. When one is found, economic circumstances improve for all; when the tunnels collapse, the workers lose their lives, new teams are reeled in, and the process begins anew. Yet Salgues unveils a core of dignity at the story's center, personified by two characters - the Nigerian farmer Mocktar, still reeling from a personal tragedy, who nevertheless demonstrates astonishing tenacity by climbing into the scorching tunnels each morning; and his female counterpart, the gorgeous Coumba, also reeling from a disaster - the sudden, unexpected death of most of her family, and her consequent need to raise her daughter on her own. Amid a difficult, threatening environment, these two quickly find soulmates and a ray of hope in one another. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Laurent Salgues
Laurent Salgues was born in France on September 13th 1967. After a master’s in audiovisual studies at l'École Supérieure d'Audiovisuel (ESAV) in Toulouse, he perfected his screenplay writing at the Conservatoire Européen d'Ecriture Audiovisuelle (CEEA) and at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1992 to 1996, he directed three short subjects (“Eternité moins cinq”, “Camilio” and “La femme à l’ombrelle”). Since 2003, he has been a screenplay writer for television and film. “Rêves de poussière” is his first full-length feature film. -