Po di Sangui
(Tree of Blood)

In the village of Amanha Lundju, with each birth, a tree is planted. The trees grow with each child, growing higher and living longer, becoming the villager's soul. But day after day, trees are cut down for survival, and wood has become rare. One day drought and death will come. When Dou, the nomad, comes back from the savannah, his twin, Hami, has just died. The village is extremely tense. What did Hami die of? What illness is eating away at Amanha Lundju? Dou must take the place of his deceased brother and live with Hami's w(fe and daughter. The young Saly, who was promised to Dou, is mad with grief falls in love with the sun. When the forestry surveyors arrive from the city the world looses Its balance. Calacalado, the old witch doctor, orders the village to move. They go as far as the desert on a passage of initiation from which they will return only when a child is born, in order to plant another tree...

"I hope with 'Po di Sangui' to speak of the threats looming over my country Guinea Bissau. Our identity is rooted in animist traditions and myth. Man inhabits Nature as much as he is himself inhabited by Nature. This interdependence cannot be broken without creating serious disorder, for the individual as well as for the entire community. (With no technology or industry, natural resources are essential to the nation's wealth). 'Po di Sangui' shows human beings who live out an impassionate relationship with the Nature, even at the risk of losing themselves. It's the tragedy of a community evicted from its forest and thrown onto the roads of exile and desert. 'Po di Sangui' aims to be a message of hope, a call to resistance. Will we be able to stop the process of our forests' destruction which no-one seems capable of mastering." - Flora Gomes

Directed by: Flora Gomes
Written by: Flora Gomes, Anita Fernández
Starring: Dulcenia Bidjanque, Djuco Bodjan, Dadu Cisse, Edna Evora, Bia Gomes, Adama Kouyate, Ramiro Naka
Produced by: Jean-Pierre Gallepe
Original Music by: Pablo Cueco