This psychological film about hope and sacrifice in an era of global economic crisis was shot in a mine in post-war Serbia and an illegal gold mine in Surinam.
An artist and a director Ben Russell works at the crossroads of ethnography and psychedelics. His films and installations are in a state of direct dialogue with the history of the documentary image and offer a chronological study of the trance phenomenon, referring to the works of Jean Rush, Maya Derain, Michael Snow and many others. The film starts with a 600-metres descent into the depths of the Earth, where the camera captures a person's face, seized by the light of the lantern, in the national underground mine in Serbia, where day and night are mixed.
The hiss of oxygen interrupts the din of the diesel, the office walls vibrate from the explosions two levels lower. The physical struggle of these war-torn and half-forgotten miners is reflected on another continent - in the tropical heat of an illegal gold mining enterprise in Suriname. Water pumps are roaring under the blinding sun; silvery liquid shimmers in the hands of Maron Saramakki when he adds mercury to the mud in the endless search for gold. Created between darkness and light, cold and heat, north and south, Good Luck plunges its viewers into the unstable natural and social environment of two different groups of workers to better understand what binds these men together. This reveals the human basis of capital in the era of the global economic crisis.
Good Luck
USA, 2017, 143 min. 18+
Directed by Ben Russell