Until eight years ago, Adama was a little slave in a gold mine in Burkina Faso, exploited twelve hours a day for a dish of rice and beans and beaten with a stick if he did not keep up with the pace of work. A child miner, with a torch held to his temple by an elastic band, he went in and out of the belly of a crumbling mountain dropping to a depth of fifty metres. Every week someone lost their life to landslides and miasmas. Adamà was afraid but his dream was to find gold and be able to go back to school. And he did go back to school: in Italy.
Now he is a university student in Brindisi. He speaks Italian perfectly and, with the elderly people in the village, a fantastic dialect of the Salento area. Everything began with a film and an Italian producer who came to his country to shoot it in the mine where he was working. The woman was struck by the immense sadness in his eyes and his perfect French. She chose him as the hero of the film and promised him that she would have done everything she could to let him continue his studies in Italy.
And at times miracles do happen. Now the boy from the mine has become a very good-looking young man, he has found two really special friends-parents. And his dreams are coming true: «I want to study communication, work as an intercultural educator and then go back to my country and open a school for all the children who want to study and cannot, just as I couldn’t”.
Run time: 58’
Directed by Annamaria Gallone
First Assistant Director: Gloria Aura Bortolini
Produced by Kenzi Productions
Director of Photography: Gianni Bonardi
Editor:Christian Giuffrida
