Glasgow Film Festival 2015: Family Goldmine

Generally speaking, documentaries are most successful when they present viewers with one of two polarised extremes, offering either sweeping, evocative glimpses of periods in history or closely observed character studies. This disappointing offering from Robbie Fraser sits awkwardly between the momentous and the mundane.

Revolving around a father who takes his family to Mali in a bid to establish a successful goldmine, Family Goldmine could have been an effective meditation on late capitalism. The attitudes governing the French family’s relocation to former colonial Africa and the ethics of their operation are ultimately ignored, however.

So is this the story of a plucky entrepreneur attempting to get ahead, despite lacking the requisite knowledge and experience to comfortably achieve his goal? Ostensibly, but what a dull protagonist. We’re told the patriarch is a ‘force of nature’, but not once does he display the compelling characteristics of a man on a quixotic quest. Instead he chuckles to himself like Popeye and makes the occasional tired joke in a second language.

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