Coming to PBS’s POV tonight, Monday, August 25: BIG MEN
Rachel Boynton’s exploration of oil exploitation in West Africa made its bow at Tribeca last year. Its fest circuit has included Locarno, Hot Docs, Bergen, Camden, Vancouver, Pan African, RIDM, CPH:DOX, True/False, Films From the South, Human Rights Watch London, and Planete+ Doc.
Filming between 2007 and 2011, Boynton reveals the story of Ghana’s unexpected entry into the oil industry and the resultant jockeying for profit and power in board rooms and in the halls of government, gaining remarkable access to the various entities involved – Dallas-based Kosmos Energy, a firm whose initial high risk investment in oil exploration in Ghana paid off; their partner, local outfit EO Group; Ghana’s national oil company, GNPC; members of the government; and, as a cautionary parallel narrative, representatives from neighboring Nigeria’s embattled oil industry, as well as the scrappy group of rebels who sabotage their pipelines in protest and for black market profit, the Deadly Underdogs. It’s to Boynton’s credit that through five years, a change in government, charges of corruption, criminal investigations by both the US and Ghanaian governments, board firings, and a worldwide financial crisis, she nevertheless retains a clarity of storytelling that raises provocative questions that have no easy answers. Wisely focusing on a handful of key players, notably EO Group’s fall guy, George Owusu, and Kosmos Energy’s CEO, Jim Musselman, the film places multinational concerns within a personal, relatable context. In so doing, she deftly demonstrates how the aspiration to become the “big men” of her title can all too easily open the floodgates to avarice and self-interest above all else.
