Images of the North Atlantic—sunbathed, moonlit, digitally rendered in some shots but no less striking—punctuate Mati Diop’s hypnotic debut feature Atlantics (Atlantique). The waves surging the shores of Dakar, Senegal poetically encapsulate the duality that animates her soulful fable, where the ocean emerges as a central character, seductive and foreboding, a specter of past and contemporary traumas, buried and bound to resurface with the tide. Ten years ago, Diop’s original short of the same name referenced the infamous journey of the Méduse, the 19th century French naval frigate that departed from Rochefort and ran aground off the West African coast. Close to mind are kin events, the refugee crisis and—more so here than in its progenitor—memory of the Middle Passage: the voyage of no return, the moment of rupture that beget generations of two-spirited children. Perhaps no figure is more suited to convey this two-ness,...
- 11/3/2019
- MUBI
"Something took hold of me last night." Netflix has finally unveiled the official Us trailer for Atlantics, the award-winning film from up-and-coming French filmmaker Mati Diop that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival playing in-competition earlier this summer. The film also goes under the title Atlantique, which is just the French version of Atlantics - a direct reference to "people of the Atlantic". The film is set in Dakar, Senegal, which sits on the western coast of Africa in the middle of the Atlantic. Workers at the construction site of a futuristic tower, without pay for months, decide to leave the country on a boat across the ocean in hope of a better future. Among them is Souleiman, lover of Ada, promised to another. Atlantics stars Mama Sane, Amadou Mbow, Ibrahima Traore, Nicole Sougou, Aminata Kane, and Diankou Sembene. This won the Grand Prix award in Cannes and has been...
- 10/8/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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