Dao

Spanning France, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau, Dao follows a West African diasporic family navigating two major community gatherings across parallel timelines: a modern wedding celebration in the French countryside and an ancestral funeral ceremony for a patriarch back in Guinea-Bissau. With this expansive, three-hour epic, acclaimed filmmaker Alain Gomis (2017 Chicago IFF Silver Hugo Jury Award winner for Félicité) weaves ritual, lineage, and fractured geography together, constructing a rich spiritual cartography of a family separated by international borders yet bound by blood.

Rejecting linear narrative conventions, Gomis allows joy and mourning to continuously overlap and inform one another, illustrating how physical distance cannot sever cultural and familial memory. Through stunning light, rich textures, and rhythmic pacing, Dao transforms the choreography of community ceremonies into an active language of diasporic survival, capturing how history and tradition accompany us wherever we go.