Under the Starry Sky

Under the skies of three cities — Turin, New York, and Dakar — Dyana Gaye charts the accidental intersections of characters in transit. Plans are derailed, happenstance meetings change courses, and destinies intertwine. Sophie (Marème Demba Ly), a young Senegalese bride, follows her husband, Abdoulaye (Souleymane Seye N'Diaye), from Dakar to Turin, where he has travelled without papers to look for work. Meanwhile, Abdoulaye has already has left for New York, lured by his cousin, Serigne (Babacar M'Baye Fall), and a promise of better opportunities. Abdoulaye's one contact in New York, Sophie's aunt, is en route to Dakar with her son, Thierno (Ralph Amoussou), to bury the husband she left twenty years earlier.

Quietly dramatic, Under the Starry Sky captures with masterful exactitude the anxieties one can suffer while experiencing far-flung geographies and cultures. Accentuating the shadowy world of undocumented travel, the film unravels like a cinematic scroll of the mysterious grand design that draws people together, in empathy and antipathy, as they fight to shape their lives and pursue their aspirations.

Gaye's tapestry of stories and characters, linked and yet stretched across time zones, is a gorgeously orchestrated meditation on being out of one's element and negotiating a place for oneself in this world, knowing that life is itself merely a passage.

RASHA SALTI