In her debut film Atlantics, director Mati Diop opens the story on a large group of young migrant men in Senegal. But Diop’s supernatural, emotionally charged drama does not revolve around them, so much as their absence. They haunt the movie as ghosts possessing the women they left behind.
The French-Senegalese director entered the Cannes Film Festival competition in May with a film displaying genre-sweeping subtlety, complex characters, and vivid cinematography. Though only her first feature-length film, Diop’s Atlantics earned the Grand Prix prize at Cannes – the first time a female director of color has done so.
Part coming-of-age film, part ghost story, and part political drama, Atlantics received rave reviews from critics and fans alike. It also captured the attention of Netflix, where it just debuted.
Mati Diop Mixes Cinematic Genres
With elements of teen romance, tragedy, and the supernatural, Atlantics is hard to categorize in a particular genre. It follows the story of Ada, a 17-year-old girl, and the young man she loves, Souleiman. When Souleiman and his fellow workers fail to receive pay for four months of work, they leave for Spain. The film follows Ada and other women the men left behind, as strange things begin to happen in the wake of the departure.
In one moment Atlantics takes the color of a coming-of-age drama. In the next, a police procedural, a ghost story, and a tragic romance once more. Remarkably, the film does not jump awkwardly between these genres. Rather, it flows naturally to become something sui generis. In fact, Diop felt that the story she wanted to tell – one of the realities of migration faced by many in Senegal – required a new kind of cinematic form.
“When I was in Dakar in 2009, the way the boys were telling me about the crossing felt very strange to me, because I was talking to boys who were here in front of me, in flesh and bones, but who were so possessed by the idea of elsewhere that they were no longer here anymore,” says Diop.
“And it’s also about a youth who disappeared in the ocean, which can be felt like a ghost generation – you know, a whole group of young people who disappeared in the ocean. And I personally – I was troubled. I was a bit haunted by that. And that’s why for me, it was always going to be a ghost film.”
A Creative Family Legacy
Despite its supernatural aura, Diop pulled strongly from her own reality to develop Atlantics. “The starting point of the film is quite personal,” she reveals. “I have a very special relationship to migration. I’m the daughter of an immigrant. And as a mixed girl, the tension between departure and coming back is quite present in me.”
She also cites her family’s creative legacy as inspiration. Her father is jazz musician Wasis Diop. Her uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty was one of Senegal’s most highly acclaimed directors and poets before his death.
“I really measured and realized his heritage and the importance of his legacy,” Diop observes. “I don’t carry my legacy as something heavy or constrained. I still felt something had to be continued, in my way.”
Mati Diop Breaks New Ground at Cannes
Diop is developing a distinctive legacy of her own. Not only did Atlantics win the Grand Prix at Cannes, but placed Diop in a ground-breaking position as it did so.
“At Cannes, everything was very overwhelming,” Diop recalls. “I had to integrate the fact that my first feature was going to competition. And that I was the first black woman going there. That’s a lot to take.”
Nevertheless, Diop left the festival with gratitude. She noted that her film had reached not just a Senegalese audience, which she expected, but all of its viewers. “It means that at the end the film is very accessible and universal, and it doesn’t enclose – it opens,” she says.
Watch Atlantics on Netflix here.
