Dreams of Dust

Colour, 35 mm
Burkina Faso, Canada, France, 2007, 85 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Mocktar leaves Nigeria for Burkina Faso where he hopes to get work in a desert gold mine so he can try and forget about the death of his youngest daughter. In Essakane, however, the gold rush ended twenty years before, and the inhabitants of this wasteland and strange timelessness manage to exist simply from force of habit; they continue to nurture their dreams of wealth and a better future, borne away by the eternal wind, disappearing in the dust and sand and summoned once again as they gaze at the unending horizon. The encounter with three men, two women and the child of one of them forces the man, who wanted to escape his fate, to take stock of his life. The long shots of muted colours focus on facial expressions and the gentle gestures of the characters. In this feature-film debut, the director also reduces the dialogues, music and sound to a minimum, in order to allow the viewer to observe Mocktar’s inner world undisturbed. The film was screened at the Sundance and Venice IFFs.

About the director

Laurent Salgues (b. 1967, France) initially studied audiovisual media at the École Supérieure d’Audiovisuel (ESAV) in Toulouse, and then went on to study scriptwriting in Paris, New York and at the UCLA in California. Between the years 1992 and 1996 he made four short films, and has been writing film and television screenplays since 2003. The film Dreams of Dust  is his feature-film debut and was screened at the festivals in Sundance and Venice.