By Siegfried ForsterPosted on 02-10-2019Modified on 02-10-2019 at 06:36

With her camera, she reversed the point of view and watched the drama of immigration on the other side. The 37-year-old Franco-Senegalese, the first female filmmaker of African descent who won the Grand Prix in Cannes, released her film "Atlantique" in France on Wednesday (October 2nd).

With Atlantique , Mati Diop remained in Senegal with those who do not take the boat, but mourn the dead before organizing the revolution in their own way. After a preview at the Grand Théâtre de Dakar in early August , this film-phenomenon goes from today to meet its public in France.

The Franco-Senegalese is making a poetic, political and dreamlike plea for not giving up on the tragedies of illegal emigration in African countries. She chooses a new way to turn the camera on the situation of a Senegalese youth so desperate that it is ready to die rather than to stay. His goal: to show the drama of exile seen by the feminine forces.

The sea, from the first pictures, she is there. In front of her, even the camera shakes sometimes. Filmed like a person of character from every angle, from near and far, calm and unchained, tender and terrifying, luminous and dark, the sea is the thread of this story that takes place in a popular suburb of Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

The building site of the big tower

In the beginning, on the first images, we do not see it, but we hear it rumble, at the foot of the building site of the great tower named Atlantic. Here, between heaven and earth, workers are busy and exhausted. It's been three months since they were not paid. They complain, they revolt, but all they reap is the contempt of the big boss. So the only consolation for Suleiman, one of the young workers, is Ada, his lover.

But even when they kiss, the Atlantic is there. " You only look at the ocean. You do not even look at me , "accuses Ada, incarnated with subtlety and grandeur by Mame Binta Sane . Their love seems to be fraught with obstacles. They must meet in secret. Ada is promised in marriage to a rich man. She does not care. She does not like him. His heart belongs to Sulaiman. But, one day, indebted and desperate, this one sails on a pirogue to conquer Europe ...

The ghosts of migrants

It is from this moment that Mati Diop innovates with his camera while staying in Senegal with those who wait, broken, devastated. The storm arrives, the boat breaks against the high waves like a house. But while we are experiencing the tragedy of exile with the eyes of an abandoned woman, then bizarre things happen: the wedding bed catches fire, Ada and her friends Fanta, Dior and Mariana start to be struck by mysterious diseases to which even the marabouts prove powerless. Above all, some say they have seen the ghosts of the migrants who stayed at sea.

This is where the resistance will go against humiliation and for a life in dignity. The bewitched and possessed women claim their due. The bodies without a tomb at the bottom of the ocean join the world of the undead. When the infinity of poetry mingles with the fantastic and the tragic of life, the injustice of the world resurfaces from the bottom of the Atlantic. And it is not trivial that it is a woman who carries this emancipation.

The feminine force and cinematographic freedom

It also shows the path traveled by Mati Diop. In 2010, in her short film Atlantiques , she told the drama of the exodus with a look still very documentary and through the crossing of a young man. Today, with her first feature film shot in Wolof, she focuses on feminine strength and imagination to assume her cinematic freedom, but also to try to overcome and change a reality that has become unsustainable on both sides of the river. . Born in 1982 in Paris, she always said: " I come from both here and elsewhere, from Senegal ".

Often described as the next generation of Senegalese cinema, Mati Diop is an admirer of the confusing and captivating cinema of the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Palme d'Or in 2010. After her Grand Prix in Cannes, the daughter of the musician Wasis Diop is well on her way to represent Senegal at the Oscars. Thus, she now asserts herself as a worthy heiress of her uncle, the famous Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty, who received the Cannes Critics' Prize in 1973 for Touki Bouki .

Also to listen: Mati Diop, beyond the horizon

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