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Here’s your first look trailer for a film we’ve been tracking since it first showed up on our radar in the fall of 2011… first a brief catch-up…

It’s the feature film debut for French/Senegalese director Dyana Gaye, whose short film, the vibrant, unorthodox musical Saint Louis Blues, was one of 5 projects selected, financed and produced under the Focus Features Africa First program (she was part of the very first class, announced in 2008).

Titled Des Etoiles (or, in English, Under the Starry Sky), the project was one of 22 selected for the annual Co-production Village, which ran from December 11-13, 2011 at the 3rd Les Arcs European Film Festival; then it was announced as one of 5 debut feature film projects selected at the last 2011 session of the second advance on receipts committee of the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC); and most recently, it was one of 15 projects selected for the Cannes L’Atelier last year – an initiative which runs during the Cannes Film Festival aimed at finding financing for projects by upcoming directors that are in an advanced state of development.

And there are still other honors bestowed upon the project, as it traveled from one market/conference to the next, raising financing along the way and attracting talent at each stop, culminating in the film’s eventual World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this year last September.

I previously pegged it to debut at Cannes last year, but it didn’t.

Shot in early 2013, the film’s synopsis reads:

Over one winter, through the cities of Dakar, Torino and New York, we follow the exiled paths of several interconnected characters. For her husband’s funeral, New Yorker Mame Amy returns to Dakar with her 19-year-old son Thierno, who takes his first ever steps on African soil. Sophie, 24-years-old, leaves Dakar for Torino to join her husband Abdoulaye. He is missing. Abdoulaye has just arrived in New York with his cousin through an organisation of clandestine migrants. As the days go by, their destinies begin to echo one another, through the diversity of the cities they are crossing, somehow all united under the same starry sky.

Its cast includes Souleymane Seye N’Diaye (from fellow Senegalese Moussa Toure’s The Pirogue), Babacar M’Baye Fall, Ralph Amoussou, Italian actress Maya SansaMata Gabin, 
Andreï Zayats and Marième Demba Ly.

Des Etoiles’ Gaye co-wrote the script with Cécile Vargaftig.

The film is being produced by Arnaud Dommerc for Andolfi Production, in a co-production effort with Centrale Electrique, Cinekap (Senegal), MG Productions (Belgium), as well as the Groupama Gan Foundation for the Cinema, the Fond Francophone de Production Audiovisuelle du Sud and the Procirep.

The film already has distribution set for release in French theatres at the end of this month, via Haut et Court; meanwhile, international sales are being handled by Films Distribution.

Whether it’ll travel to the USA, I can’t say at this time. Although I’m betting it’ll be picked up by one or two stateside film festivals – especially the Diaspora festivals.

It’s feels like it’s been a long journey. I’m excited for this, given what I know of Dyana Gaye’s past work.

Below is the film’s first official trailer, although it’s for the France release, so it’s not subtitled in English.