A striking portrait of a young teenager working as a labourer around the Perkoa gold mine in Burkina Faso, If You Are A Man sees the young Opio face the toughest of decisions as he realises that the only way to make money to pay for his schooling is to head down into the mine himself, a prospect that terrifies him.
French filmmaker Simon Panay has already made several short documentaries in West Africa. For this feature, shot over a two-year period during which time he gained the trust of young Opio, he seemingly placed the camera on the shoulder of a determined young individual navigating a period of his life defined by personally seismic decisions.
Born in the Sanguié Province, Opio attended school until the age of eight. Following his father’s second marriage and disengagement both from his first wife and the five children born from that union, Opio chose to leave his village to try his luck at the nearby Perkoa gold mine. He joined a team of gold miners, helping them in their daily work in exchange for food and sometimes of a bag of rocks from the underground caverns that he breaks down in the hope of finding a tiny piece of gold.
An aerial drone shot of the mine shows its ramshackle nature, pockmarked with holes where miners have descended deep into the ground. Opio pragmatically describes his work, saying: “When there’s an accident we carry the bodies back up and we line them up to count them. I’m still too young to go down into the pit. The pit scares me.”
“I barely earn enough to eat. I don’t like it here, I want to go to school with the others – but I don’t have a choice. My dad doesn’t have any money,” he adds.
He goes back to his home village once a week, his demeanour changing around his father. At the mining camp he is chatty and forthright, but with his father he is quiet and disengaged. His father wants him to attend a vocational training course in the nearby town of Réo, but cannot afford the school fees. Opio will have to raise the money by himself and the only way to do so is to ask his boss for a promotion…and the right to go down into the underground galleries that frighten him so much.
He is told how, “the pit isn’t for sissies…even if you are brave, children don’t go into the pit, it is just for grown-ups,” before being given permission to try it out. Among his friends on the surface he is full of bravado, but as the camera descends into the deep blackness there is a real sense of just how frightening it is in this tight and claustrophobic environment. He sings to himself, batters rocks and prays that he will find gold.
Eventually raising enough money for one term Opio finds himself back in a classroom, but unable to write his own name struggles to make his way. The final moments of the film see him ambling back into the camp to visit once more his family of mining friends. An on-screen coda tells of his eventual fate.
It is a familiar and sad story, beautifully shot by Simon Panay who does a fine immersive job at embedding with the youngsters at the mine and coming up with chilling footage that shows just how scary it is for these young miners. Opio may have finally found a family of sorts, but his dreams of escape are based on finding those elusive fragments of gold.
France-Burkina Faso, 2022, 76mins
Dir/scr: Simon Panay
Production: Loull Production, Moteur S’il Vous Plait, Acacia Productions, Canal + International
International sales: Cercamon
Producers: Xavier Castano, Christie Molia, Arnaud de Buchy
Cinematography: Simon Panay
Editors: Thomas Marchand, Simon Panay
Music: Philippe Fivet
With: Opio Bruno Bado
