Unveiled in competition at the 76th Berlinale, Dao [+lee también:
crítica
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entrevista: Alain Gomis
ficha de la película] is the sixth feature by Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis and his new fiction film following Félicité [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Alain Gomis
ficha de la película] (Grand Jury Prize in Berlin in 2017).

Cineuropa: How did the idea come about for a largely non-narrative film like Dao, with its back-and-forth movement between Guinea-Bissau and France?
Alain Gomis: I attended the ceremony honouring my late father and I really wanted to make something out of it. Then I found myself at a wedding in France and I thought that the two events could work together. It said something about these families spread across several continents. There was also a broader idea of cycles, of generational renewal, of the question of what we pass on. I also wanted to portray the second generation of immigrants, how they built their lives, as if it had been a feat, a big surprise to be an adult, to have grown-up children. There were many elements. At first it was meant to be a small film which, along the way, became something like a fresco.

Why choose to make a fictional work in a style bordering on documentary?
Throughout my career as a filmmaker, I have discovered how to weave together movements that are not necessarily narrative. There are many small threads woven into the film, recurring elements or characters, minor secondary and tertiary narratives, etc. It is somewhat the final stage of an experiment. A film can be compelling without necessarily relying on that slightly caricatural kind of dramaturgy we’re often pushed into creating. As soon as you have different things and lots of small elements, you can create puzzles, mosaics and things in motion. But I conceived this film as a mainstream film, not as a film for contemplation.

What about the auditions you included in the film?
I wanted a very open film, a film that we could make together. When I realised the scale of the project - meaning that I had to write for men, women, children, old people, young people, etc. - it seemed impossible. I wanted to listen to these people, to start with them, to ask ourselves what we wanted to say and show. I felt that the film could be a kind of collective fiction, conscious of saying: this is what we want to show about ourselves. As if we were taking back control. I have always worked with professional and non-professional actors, and I have always been very impressed by the ability of non-actors to throw themselves into fiction. It's as if it allows them to explore things they can't necessarily explore every day. In the film, there are sometimes a real son and his real father who can say things to each other that they can't say in real life. Or sometimes it's not his real father, and the son also seizes the opportunity to express himself...

How did you want to approach the mirroring of the funeral ceremony in Guinea-Bissau and the wedding in France?
These two ceremonies are both equally ancient. What I like about tradition is how we reclaim it, how we reinvent it in the present, how we feel in this representation of tradition. We inscribe these two moments in the lives of our children, nephews, nieces, etc. They are cultural markers that we play with, two twin ways of collectively identifying ourselves in a symbolic act that marks something.

What was your guiding principle in order to avoid slipping into an ethnographic film in Guinea-Bissau?
Simply to convey things as they are, that is to say alive, as if we were giving ourselves a shared past in the present, restoring modernity to a myth shaped in the here and now rather than adhering to a kind of fixed image of the past.

Why was it important for you to convey, as much as possible, a sense of real duration?
Because that's where the most important things between people happened, those little moments of nothingness, being there for each other, all those small things that create feelings, closeness, that bring us together, that show we love each other. When scripted, these things can quickly become caricatures. We had to give ourselves time for that, and ceremonies allow us to do so because we're not always available the rest of the time. It is a human pleasure that brings us together, and everyone can relate to it regardless of their country, nationality, or origin.

The film resembles a jazz piece with many small improvisations around a melodic line.
That's exactly how it happened on set. There was a script, but it completely exploded with many scenes that weren't written. Even though filming only lasted 20 days, there were a lot of rushes. To try to make it all work together, we first had to listen to each other a lot in order to adapt and improvise. It's both my most and least personal film because it's really a collective work. I showed the participants some edits because I wanted them to feel comfortable.