Dao

OTHER FESTIVALS:  Berlin, New York, BFI London

“DAO is a perpetual and circular movement which flows in everything and unites the world.” Dao takes us to the casting of Gloria, a character whose daughter is about to be married. An off-screen voice directing the casting session tells us that “the first step is to make this family”. Actors and non-actors are cast and brought together to become relatives who will all celebrate a wedding in Paris and commemorate the loss of their patriarch in Guinea-Bissau. Their individual stories and their common threads of heritage are woven together with fact and fiction as they travel between these two worlds; love, laughter, ritual, pain and history intertwined. Perpetual circular movement framing reality.

Directed by Alain Gomis, 2026, France/Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, in French and Wolof with English subtitles, 185 minutes, NR