Dao

Exuberant, intimate, and warmly funny, Dao is acclaimed director Alain Gomis’s (Félicité) magnum opus: a family epic that ingeniously moves between mother and daughter to unfold one of the great stories about kinship and the occasions that define a life. The film follows middle-aged Gloria (a mesmerizing Katy Correa) at the wedding of her daughter Nour (D’Johé Kouadio): a musical, riotous celebration in rural France that brings together legions of family, friends, and unresolved tensions. A year earlier, mother and daughter travel to Guinea-Bissau for Gloria’s late father’s memorial service, bringing together the same relatives for a very different sort of ceremony. With unparalleled realism, Gomis casts actors and non-actors — including members of his own family — uncovering moments of great beauty with the infectious pulse, palpable textures, and dizzying scope of real life.