Dao

The Dao is a “perpetual and circular movement, flowing through all things and uniting the world”. So begins the latest prodigious film by Alain Gomis. In an initial casting sequence, he seeks to assemble the members of a family, real or otherwise, who will enter the realm of fiction, bringing with them the weight of their inheritances, their memories and their own family bonds. 
Katy Correa plays Gloria, set to marry off her daughter Nour (D’Johé Kouadio) in the suburbs of Paris. Some time ago, in Guinea-Bissau, she attended the ceremony that consecrated her dead father as an ancestor. The film navigates freely between the two ceremonies, carrying with it the stories of different generations of immigrants and the invisible bonds they have built between one place and another. In the emotion of these ceremonies, things become as fluid as they are blurred, as absurd as they are meaningful – a testament to the Dao at work. In this act of autofiction, Alain Gomis goes beyond the powers of cinema to transcend forms and enable us to grasp the Dao, which remains invisible to anyone unable to take the time to dwell with it.

Aurélien Marsais

Dao, 2026
Rewind & Play, 2022
Félicité, 2017
Tey, 2012
Andalucia, 2007
L’Afrance, 2001