Award-Winning ‘Atlantics’ Director Mati Diop Says Cinema Has As Moral Duty To Create Visibility

It took Mati Diop just seven weeks to shoot Atlantics, but it’s a film she says she has been making all her life. “Migration is part of who I am,” the 37-year-old explains. “If my father hadn’t come to France, I wouldn’t be here in front of you. I wouldn’t have made this film.” Diop grew up in Paris to a French mother and Senegalese father, and the raconteur spirit runs through her veins. Djibril Diop Mambéty, the acclaimed director of Touki Bouki and Hyenas, is her uncle. Over the years, Diop has worked in front of, as well as behind, the lens with acting credits including Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum and Matías Piñeiro’s Hermia & Helena.

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Atlantics — Diop’s debut feature — deftly weaves together a multitude of narratives into a captivating and deeply moving ghost story set in Dakar and largely spoken in the region’s native tongue, Wolof. At its centre is the protagonist Ada, a young woman engaged to be married to the wealthy Omar, but whose heart belongs to a construction worker by the name of Souleiman. When Souleiman and his fellow labourers, tired of being short paid, set off by boat in search of a better life in Europe, they tragically never return — in body at least. Their spirits come back to seek justice and be reunited with their loved ones. There are so many peculiar happenings, from spontaneous combustion to supernatural possession, that this hardly serves as a spoiler.

In May 2019, Diop made history when she became the first black female director to screen a film in competition at Cannes and subsequently picked up the Grand Prix. Since then, she has been honoured with the inaugural Mary Pickford Award​ at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and was selected as Senegal’s entry for international film feature at the Academy Awards.

Here, Diop shares the story of her life’s work.

What compelled you to make a film that centres on the topic of migration?

“I started to imagine my film 10 years ago, before what people now call ‘the migration crisis’. Personally, I don’t believe there is a migration crisis, but a moral and political crisis. As the daughter of an immigrant, migration is part of my history and identity and so I see it as a complex and existential reality rather than a subject.

“When I returned to Senegal in 2009 to reinvest and explore my African origins and legacy, I discovered the youth generation were escaping the country on mass for Europe, by boat, in search of a better future. The loss of so many young people at sea deeply troubled me and I was sick of the media misinterpreting their stories. So I decided to make a short documentary in which a young man recounts his own experience of the crossing. I decided to turn it into a feature film because I felt I had more to say and I wanted it to reach a larger audience. These people’s lives shouldn’t be in vain; migration affects everybody.”

Why was it important to introduce a supernatural element into the story?

“The idea was to write a ghost story about a generation who perished at sea, the omnipresence of their absence and the girls of a neighbourhood who are left behind and haunted by the spirits of these lost boys. I wanted the film to give a place for these spirits to find refuge; to ask for justice; to get the money they’re owed; to make love to their lover one last time. It’s a very new subject, born from talking about people as being ‘illegal’ when they leave the country they are born in. It’s essential for film and literature to make the oppressed not only visible, but truly embodied.”

Where in Dakar was the film shot and how did you decide on this location?

“I chose Thiaroye — a fishing community in the suburbs — for aesthetic reasons first and foremost, but also because of its history. When African soldiers [who fought for the French Free army] were brought here after the Second World War, they asked for equal pay to their white counterparts. The French officers refused and killed [as many as 300 of] them when they protested. That night [30 November 1944] is known as the Massacre of Thiaroye and it isn’t a well-known story because a lot of effort has been made to cover it up.

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“The boys of Thiaroye who take boats to come to Europe today are the descendants of those murdered soldiers. It’s interesting to set a story about revenge on the same soil, but it’s more of a gesture; it’s enough for me to know why I’m shooting in this place. The story between Senegal and France is a violent one, but my generation and I are transcending it and creating a new narrative.”

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the island of Gorée off the coast of Dakar was used to house slaves before they were transported across the Atlantic to the Americas. Was this enforced movement of people on your mind while you were making ‘Atlantics’?

“When I shot the 2009 short, I found it hard not to make connections between these waves of departure. It was very disturbing to me that young men would take these boats and risk their lives to reach Europe, especially when you think the slave trade was the opposite. Dakar felt like a ghost city to me for that reason, and the Atlantic feels like a very haunted place.”

What was the biggest challenge of making ‘Atlantics’?

“Casting the right people and training them to act is always the most challenging thing I guess, because the characters are the heart of the film. I have a very documentary-style approach to casting. To find Souleiman, I went to a construction site because I wanted him to know this reality. Dior [Ada’s best friend] worked as a barmaid at the time and her life was quite close to her character’s.

“It took me seven months to find Ada. I was about to delay shooting, but then I saw this girl [Mame Bineta Sane] one day in Thiaroye and it was beautiful because she appeared when I wasn’t consciously looking. The fact that she was missing up to this point made me even more involved in casting the right person because I chose the rest of the characters as though I was her; who would be my girlfriends, who would be my lover?”

Why, in your words, was Senegalese-born musician and artist Fatima Al Qadiri the best person to create the soundtrack?

“Fatima is by far one the best musicians and artists of my generation and embodies the music of my time. I chose her because I wanted the music of the film to bewitch the audience like a djinn [genie] would, she also has an understanding of the complex geopolitical landscape of the film. My [way of telling stories] is fed by a lot of different references — European Gothic and the romantic movement, as well as my African and Muslim heritage — so I think the film is really a strange aesthetic combination. Fatima and I have a very similar hybrid culture.”

How did you feel when you became the first black female director to be accepted into the competition line up at the Cannes Film Festival in its 72-year history, and subsequently won the Grand Prix award?

“One of the first things I told myself was, ‘Oh yes, it’s true, I’m the first black woman going there. I still can’t believe we are at this point.’ But on the other hand, shooting my first film in Africa was a real choice to me, a statement. It would have been very easy for me to be colour-blind and just consider myself a French director. But I’m not a white girl. In retrospect, I find it so reductive to focus on the colour of my skin. I wasn’t just the first black woman director to climb the steps of Cannes, I was the first 36-year-old woman in competition with a first feature, shot in Dakar, in Wolof. That’s the truth.”

Do you hope the success of ‘Atlantics’ will spark a renaissance in Senegalese filmmaking pioneered by the likes of your uncle and Ousmane Sembène?

“I don’t think of Atlantics as Senegalese cinema, but just as cinema. Djibril has a huge legacy and there has been a lack of filmmaking across Africa since his passing. It felt empty and that’s me speaking objectively, not just as his niece. I wanted to make Atlantics in Senegal so the legacy wasn’t lost, that would be a tragedy. It’s important to have an African-eye on Africa. Films aren’t just for telling stories — they should create an impact that encourages other people to make work.”

Atlantics is available to stream on Netflix now.

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