LA MONTAGNE D'OR
MOUNTAIN OF GOLD
Roland Edzard / Belgium, France / 2025 / 85 min / Colour
Italian premiere
Over the course of long expeditions into the mountainous region of the Sahara in northern Niger, the director lived among the gold prospectors, sharing their heat, daily exhaustion, struggles to secure water, the thrill of discovering a nugget, and the enduring dream of escaping a life of misery. He later asked some of them to faithfully recreate and reinterpret their lived experiences. Thus, the documentary shows an expedition on an arid mountain where young men, digging dusty new tunnels into the rock, are forced into isolation for weeks, suffering from hunger and thirst, and ultimately witnessing the death of a fellow miner. Even as a reconstruction, the story is startlingly realistic, highlighting the humanity of these young men—their dashed hopes, the fleeting joy of the few coins they manage to earn at the cost of inhuman toil, and the ever-present risk of death.
Roland Edzard
A French cinematographer and director, born in 1980, je trained at the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg and Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing. His short film La Plaine won an award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. His first feature film, La Fin du Silence (2011), was selected for the Quinzaine des Cinéastes at Cannes. La Montagne d’orwas screened at Visions du Réel 2025.
