“One day, I climbed Diosso Hill… After digging, I came upon a big rock and I saw some gold. I called for help… On the seventh day, the hill had become a town.” This all takes place in Burkina Faso. The voiceover that tells us about these early days is that of a griot and of an old prospector. CEUX DE LA COLLINE is like an African Western, milling with gold diggers, dynamiters, merchants, marabouts and prostitutes. “We are rebels,” shouts one of them, “Someone puts you in this world, tells you what you should do, and you say no, you want to do what you like”. Among a maze of beams and yellow ochre soil a young man, hardly 20 years old, explains the reasons for his presence there. Another explains the real addiction: “In a day you get lucky, but in a night the money is gone”. Each one explains his motivations, but the principal motivation remains the surrounding poverty and the dream of a better future. Yet, in Diosso, nothing is easy: the “miners” are overexploited by the “bosses”, the dynamiters risk their lives at each explosion, the chemist distributes pills by the handful and the prostitute expresses her bitterness. From one day to the next everything disappears to be rebuilt at another site… Berni Goldblat composes a gallery of picturesque portraits, the foremost quality of which is an extraordinary closeness with the protagonists. (Visions du Réel Nyon 2009)
