Po di Sangui

When the nomad Dou returns to his Guinea-Bissau village to find his twin has died, he's reluctant to take on, according to tradition, his brother's widow and daughter. Things get worse: the village is stricken by drought, and the witch doctor advises his people to abandon their birthplace. Though visually elegant (even if the slow, ornate camera-movements soon begin to irritate), Gomes' film is too obscure for non-African audiences. Included somewhere is an ecological message about the need to preserve trees (which, apparently, contain the villagers' souls), but quite what some scenes in the snail-paced narrative actually mean is likely to remain, for most, a mystery.