Table of Contents
The filmmaker Alain Gomis returns to the Berlinale with Dao, a long-form, intimate portrait of kinship that travels between Paris and Guinea-Bissau. The film brings together seasoned performers and local non-professionals to depict two linked ceremonies: a wedding in France and a funeral in Guinea-Bissau. Rooted in the director’s personal encounters, the project was built from fragments of lived experience rather than a single scripted conceit. The result is a film that deliberately occupies the space between scripted drama and documentary observation, with improvisation and local knowledge shaping the performances and rhythm.
Shot rapidly over twenty days—ten in France and ten in Guinea-Bissau—Dao was assembled from a large volume of footage. The edit reduced hundreds of hours into a three-hour narrative that preserves communal energy and spontaneous moments. Music, particularly jazz and ceremonial sounds, threads through the film and helps define its emotional texture. Gomis has described the project as an attempt to create a work in which participants recognize themselves, and he involved many collaborators in the editing process so those people could respond to how they were represented on screen. Dao is set to premiere in competition on Feb. 14 at the Berlin International Film Festival.
How the film was shaped: method and material
Gomis developed Dao from a sequence of personal experiences rather than a one-time inspiration. A funeral he attended in Guinea-Bissau left a deep impression and later encounters at a wedding helped him imagine a cinematic structure that links beginnings and endings. The filmmaking process leaned heavily on improvisation: many scenes were not fully scripted, and actors were encouraged to react in the present tense, creating an immediacy that blurs the line between performance and real life. The director’s approach turned everyday gestures, conversations and rituals into the building blocks of narrative, assembling them into a mosaic that emphasizes collective presence over individual exposition.
Mixing professional and non-professional performers
Gomis intentionally combined experienced actors with locals and family members to generate authenticity and emotional density. Non-professional performers, notably Katy Correa who leads the story opposite D’Johé Kouadio, brought unscripted intelligence to their roles; seasoned actors offered a stabilizing counterpoint. This blend produced moments that feel documentary in their candidness but dramatic in their stakes. For Gomis, the aim was not to document a culture from the outside but to make a film that reflects how participants want to be seen—inviting their contribution to both the creation and the editing stages.
Themes and tonal threads
At its core, Dao examines intergenerational ties, migration and inherited absence. The narrative highlights women’s experiences and the quiet sacrifices made by mothers—characters who often postpone personal aspirations in the service of family. Gomis revisits a female-centered perspective similar to his earlier work, exploring how identity and memory are shaped by movement across geographies and by the unspoken wounds of history. Although the film engages with issues like displacement and the legacy of colonization, it does so through intimate scenes of ritual, conversation and communal care rather than overt political statements.
Music, rhythm and the film’s sensory life
Music functions as the film’s connective tissue: ceremonial percussion and traditional sounds sit alongside jazz passages from saxophonist Keïta Janota and Gaspard Gomis. The score provides both momentum and tenderness, creating an atmosphere that balances nostalgia with forward motion. In Gomis’ hands, sound helps translate the circular notion embedded in the film’s title: Dao as a continual movement that unites moments, people and places. The result is a tonal landscape that privileges feeling and shared experience over tidy explanation.
Production and collaboration
Dao is a France-Senegal-Guinea-Bissau co-production that brought together producers and houses from each country, with international sales represented by The Party Film Sales. The director’s work with the Yennenga Centre—a cinema school and cultural hub he established in Dakar—provided access to emerging talent and production resources in West Africa. Editing was a collaborative effort, and the team preserved the film’s communal dimension by seeking feedback from participants during assembly. This inclusive practice reflects Gomis’ broader aim to make cinema as a joint act of representation.
Ultimately, Dao asks viewers to sit with cycles of celebration and mourning, to witness how private grief and public ritual shape identity across borders. It is a film about continuity and repair, crafted through a hybrid methodology that foregrounds participation and the voices of those who appear on screen. As it arrives on the Berlinale stage, the film offers a patient, human-centered study of belonging that expands Gomis’ ongoing exploration of family, music and the ties that move us.