Atlantique
The recurrent cycle Noir.e.s à la caméra allows us to discover works directed or produced by African or Afrodescendant filmmakers throughout the history of cinema.
Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt -- until a miracle reunites them.
Mati Diop
Since the early 2000s, Mati Diop has built an eclectic body of work that has won awards at numerous international festivals. Her first feature, Atlantics (2019), winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, established her as one of the leading figures in international arthouse cinema and of a new wave in African and diasporic cinema. Her nomadic, lyrical and political cinema crosses boundaries between genres and formats, as an extension of her dual identity and proud Creoleness. The formalism of her cinema is rooted in an early curiosity for the arts, particularly video and, above all, sound. At the age of 20, she shot her first self-produced short, Last Night (2004), and she confirmed her desire to become a filmmaker when Claire Denis casted her as the female lead in 35 Rhums (2008). Atlantiques (2009), Mille Soleils (2013) and Atlantics form a manifesto that substantiates a political choice: militant cinema in Senegal, whose working-class youth will be its beating heart. Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, Dahomey (2024), the director’s second feature, shot in Benin, focuses on the restitution of royal treasures looted during colonisation by France, reaffirms her artistic activism on the African continent.
Bio: MUBI
Photo: Henry Roy
Explore
«Atlantique»: des zombies et des femmes
L’œuvre élégante et ambitieuse se décline en plusieurs tons : film social presque documentaire, romance, fantastique, polar, avec passages entre les genres pas toujours au point. Un scénario parfois effiloché, des jeux d’interprètes assez appuyés se greffent à des scènes parfois remarquables, nourries de réalisme magique...
Image : La Presse
