Alain Gomis’ Sprawling French-African Family Drama
The movies of writer-director Alain Gomis have often drifted between two separate continents and cultures. On the one side there’s France, where his mother comes from — and where Gomis grew up and studied film before making his first feature, the aptly titled immigrant drama L’Afrance. And on the other side there’s the Africa of his father, where the director has shot several movies over the past decade, including Félicité, the gritty story of a singer in the Democratic Republic of Congo that won Berlin’s Silver Bear award back in 2017. Gomis returns to the Berlinale with Dao, a sprawling tale of two ceremonies, which — as if to prove the above point — takes place simultaneously between France and Guinea-Bissau, where some of the director’s relatives hail from. Gomis further blurs the lines between fact and fiction by including members of his own family among the cast, mixing them with amateur performers and a few seasoned French stars. The result is unlike any regular narrative feature, immersing the viewer in a collective experience that …
