French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis‘ (L’afrance, Félicité, Rewind & Play) new film Dao is all about movement and the cycle of life. It kicks off with a definition of its title, which reads: “Dao is a perpetual and circular movement which flows in everything and unites the world.”
The feature, world premiering in the competition lineup of the Berlin International Film Festival, brings together professional and non-professional actors to become on-screen relatives, who are celebrating a wedding in Paris and the funeral of a patriarch in Guinea-Bissau, creating what press notes describe as “perpetual circular movement framing reality.”
Dao, a France-Senegal-Guinea-Bissau co-production, is Gomis’ sixth feature and marks his return to the Berlinale where his Félicité won the Silver Bear in 2017. The French producers are Les Films du Worso and SRAB Films, with Senegalese co-producers Yennenga Productions and Nafi Films, as well as Telecine Bissau Produções in Guinea-Bissau. The Party Film Sales is handling world sales.
The cast of Dao features the likes of Katy Correa, D’Johé Kouadio, Samir Guesmi, Mike Etienne, and such Gomis family members as Nicolas Gomis, Fara Baco Gomis, and Poundo Gomis. The people, or characters, in the film come together in France and Africa.
“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,” reads a synopsis of the movie. “Two celebrations, organically intertwined through bodies and time, leading to a rebirth.”
Written and directed by Alain Gomis and featuring cinematography by Céline Bozon, Amath Niane, and Mabeye Deme, Dao was edited by Gomis, Fabrice Rouaud, Assetou Koné, Dimitri Ouedraogo, Elizabeth Ndiaye, and Moustapha Mbalo Dieng.
In 2018, Gomis founded the Yennenga Centre in Dakar, Senegal, “a socio-cultural center and school for cinema with the intention of developing film production and post-production in West Africa,” whose talent the creator could tap for work on Dao.
‘Dao,’ courtesy of The Party Film Sales
“The film didn’t spring from a specific idea at a given moment; it came together from things that accumulated over time,” Gomis says in a director’s statement. “My father’s funeral ceremony in Guinea-Bissau was an incredibly powerful and important moment in the process. I knew I wanted to create something from that experience, but I didn’t yet know what form it would take. And then a year or two later, I went to a wedding…”
Gomis discussed Dao and his unusual approach to creating it with THR.
“Life in general,” he says when asked about the inspiration for his new movie, also highlighting a focus on representation. “It’s just trying to be and to show something that really looks like us. It’s [about] trying to find a way to make a film where the people involved can recognize themselves. Most of the time, when we see ourselves on the screen, we’re not satisfied because it doesn’t look like us. So I just wanted to make a film with them, saying, ‘What do you want to share with the rest of the world? How do you want to be seen?’ Let’s try and make something together – this is us today.”
“Us” includes members of his family. “Some of them are from my family, but the film is not about my family,” Gomis tells THR. “It’s about us as human beings, about these people together at this moment.”
What is it like to mix professional and non-professional actors on set? “It makes things very authentic,” the filmmaker explains. “And it also makes non-professional actors better, because they feel more confident when they play with an actor who’s got a lot of experience.”
The result is a mix of scripted and unscripted interactions. “Some scenes were already written, but for most of it, I wanted everybody to feel comfortable to improvise,” highlights Gomis. And some of it is fictional improv. “It’s amazing how people can get into fiction with so much intensity, and it looks real.”
‘Dao,’ courtesy of The Party Film Sales
Other parts of the cinematic journey are based on real-life experiences, such as a discussion in Dao between women about how men have treated them badly in the past. “They just went into that at that moment,” recalls Gomis. “That’s what really impressed me the most when you do this kind of collective experience. These women, at this moment, chose to talk about it because they wanted to talk about it. It wasn’t me, saying, okay, let’s talk about men. They chose to say that, they wanted to share this experience. And that was fantastic. I was listening, and I was like, “Wow!’”
Have the people who make up the cast of Dao seen the film? “Yeah, most of them have seen it because I also wanted to get their feedback,” Gomis tells THR. “It was important for me that they could tell me, ‘I’m okay with that. I like the film.’ This is a film made for them. So, most of them have seen the film already at different stages of the editing process.”
The filmmaker plans to keep closely involving the people he makes movies with. “I have some ideas and I just want to continue to involve people more than before,” Gomis shares. “Making a film together is really much more important for me today.”