A Day at School

An observational portrait of two brothers from Burkina Faso who, despite their young age and the title of this film, don’t spend their days in the classroom. The film begins with the most intimate moment of the day: before going to prayers, the boys perform their morning ablutions in the quiet courtyard of their clay home. Without dialogue or explanatory voice-over, the camera follows them as they set out with their donkeys. The two of them look like cowboys, in their element on their donkey cart rolling along a quiet sandy path. Then suddenly they’re standing, timidly, at the side of a busy paved road, waiting until the car traffic passes so they can cross. It’s noisy, and women are selling their wares at the roadside. It turns out that the boys’ destination is a landfill. There they dig up soil and deliver it to a private school, a world that is starkly different from where they are growing up. They watch in silence as the school day ends, and then they go back to work.