DREAMS OF DUST (Burkina Faso/Canada/France)

This auspicious feature debut by writer/director Laurent Salgues dramatizes the plight of Africans working under dire conditions in the mining industry. A wandering Nigerian farmer named Mocktar (Makena Diop) arrives in Burkina Faso and becomes a "mole man". The job entails descending over 100 feet down a hole dug in the desert, digging a rock along the quartz vein, and bringing it up in a sack. The doctor conducting the medical check-up tells him to eschew the "blue-blues", popular amphetamines taken to make the descent less harrowing, in favor of marijuana. Mocktar's crew includes the silent Pate, the former data processor known as Techi, and the affable Old Man Thiam. The shafts can collapse in an instant causing many deaths. Mocktar befriends Coumba, whose husband died inside the mine and hopes to save enough to send her little daughter to live with a cousin in Paris. Everyone hopes to find a nugget large enough (finder keeps a third of its value) to make a difference in their lives before tragedy strikes.

Over the duration of the film, Salgues provides each character with significant backstory and psychological detail, aided by credible, often understated performances. The beauty and menace of the landscape is palpable in every frame, and the viewer leaves with a new appreciation for the life conditions in this part of the world.

Dreams of Dust is doing the festival circuit. Theatrical runs in France and Quebec are expected. Currently, it doesn't have a US distributor.