Dao
A freewheeling family saga bounces between a wedding in France and a funeral in Guinea-Bissau, exuberantly exploring identity and belonging.
Fifty-year-old Gloria has been a devoted single mother to her daughter, Nour. But when Nour announces she’s getting married, Gloria has to look at her own life, from past mistakes to future hopes. Across two grand public ceremonies – Nour’s upmarket wedding in France and a death ritual for Gloria’s late father in his home village in Guinea-Bissau – mother and daughter explore their connection to family, cultural heritage and each other.
Filled with his own family members and interrogating notions of fact/fiction, screen representation and cross-continental cultural identities, Alain Gomis’s vibrant, thematically rich family saga is named after the perpetual circular movement whose flow unites the world. Recalling MIFF 2025 highlight I Only Rest in the Storm with its Bissau-Guinean setting, narrative sprawl, dense conversations and philosophical air, this sweeping cine-mosaic is a uniquely personal and deeply thoughtful work. Premiering in competition in Berlin, Dao is a joyous follow-up to the director’s Silver Bear–winning social-realist drama Félicité (MIFF 2017), marking a triumphant return to narrative filmmaking after his drawn-from-the-archive documentary portrait of jazz legend Thelonious Monk, Rewind & Play (MIFF 2022).
“A sprawling, often mesmerizing family saga … suggests something sitting between two modes of representation, documentary and fiction, blending myth and autobiography into a stupefying epic.” – The Film Stage
Tickets
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