On the Atlantic coast of Senegal, men work their asses off to build a tower and they don’t get paid a dime for all the work they’ve done. They decide to leave the country and sail across the ocean to find a better life for themselves. Ada is the lover of one of those men, Souleiman, and she is arranged to be married to another man. Weird things are happening and a detective is trying to figure out who is doing these things.
Blaine: Mati Diop comes from a family with talent. Her father is a musician, mother is a photographer and uncle is a filmmaker. Mati wanted to follow in both parents’ footsteps. Mati loved photography, but she also wanted to be a musician. It was difficult for her to decide what she wanted to do in life because there were wonderful choices and she had so much creativity in her. Mati felt that singing was the dream, but she got to explore a lot of creative stuff as she got older.
After high school, Mati Diop spent time acting on stage. Mati also got to learn about film from her uncle. She learned that film requires different types of creative abilities to make it. Cinema is a combination of a lot of things that interest Mati. Mati wanted to know more details about cinema. Mati decided to attend film school, where she made her first short film, “Atlantics”.
Mati is half Senegalese, which comes from her father’s side, and around the time she started showing interest in film, she wanted to know stuff about her culture. Mati visited Senegal and by the time she arrived, people there were leaving the country to find a better life for themselves because they were unemployed and they just constructed a building without getting something in return. Their boss didn’t pay them the money they deserved. Mati heard about this from a boy she met through her cousin. Mati got so hooked to what she was listening to and she thought she could use this as an idea for a short film. The plot was about young men sailing through the ocean from Senegal to Spain. Mati had dedicated the short film to that boy she met. He passed away after Mati got done shooting the short film and he gave her all the details that inspired her to make her very first short film, “Atlantics”.
Years later, Mati decided to make a full length feature that would be a sequel to her first short film “Atlantics”. Only this would focus on a woman’s point of view. Mati thought it should show how things are on shore while the men are out at sea. Mati wanted to add more to the full length feature sense it was going to be longer than twenty or thirty minutes. She thought there should be a love story and spirits should be involved, which reminds me of “Ghost” a bit, but it’s different Mati’s way. Mati thought the men who died at sea could haunt their employer and take over people’s bodies to do their work or communicate through because they have unfinished business before crossing to the next place.
Mati also wanted shots that would focus on the ocean because it’s everything. She said the ocean has a voice. Mati thought “Atlantics” should have a mystical music score to it and she wanted musician Fatima Al Qadiri to do it. Fatima had never done music for a film before, but Mati thought her music could be in anything. It meant a lot to Mati that Fatima said yes to doing the score. When Mati wrote the script she wrote Fatima’s music that already existed into it, but Fatima thought there should be new sounds. Fatima asked Mati the mood of each scene as she was flipping through the script. Mati would answer and Fatima had the music in her head.
Mati wasn’t interested in finding the right actors for her movie. It was more about what people felt right to her whether they were actors or not. She would find people on the streets as they were getting a taxi or constructing a building. They weren’t sure about it until Mati explained what the plot was and it sounded interesting to them. Some had problems being apart of a movie because of the work it required, but it was a wonderful experience to help someone bring their vision to life and learn what it takes to make a movie. It was their first time acting, but they had Mati to guide things through. Mati didn’t start writing the script until after she met with the people who were going to be in her movie. Mati thought each part should be written for the person. The main characters are Ada, Issa, the detective, and Souleiman, the lover who has died at sea, played by Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbaye and Ibrahima Traore.
When the spirits take over the bodies of the living during the night and the host wakes up the next morning it’s like they have a hangover because they feel weird. Detective Issa believes Souleiman is behind these crimes he’s investigating, but Ada doesn’t believe it because she knows he went out to sea. Little do they know is Souleiman and his friends died during their voyage. Another thing is Issa is one of the hosts, so the suspect he was looking for was within him this whole time.
The film doesn’t show what being married is like for Ada. She just goes off doing average things without feeling miserable being married to someone she doesn’t love. She looks calm through the film. I don’t think Ada really cares if she is forced into a marriage with someone she doesn’t love because her heart doesn’t belong to that man, it belongs to whoever she loves. The spirits go after their employer, but Souleiman has other plans. Ada was the thing that gave his life meaning, so he goes to her, and they both have a romantic evening. The next morning, Souleiman is gone and Ada wakes up with a positive feeling. Ada will always be the person she chooses to be in life and her boyfriend is their to remind her of who she is. Souleiman has passed on, but the people you knew live on in your memories.
Mati was happy with the positive reactions people had for “Atlantics”. The film was honored the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2019. My rating on “Atlantics’ is five out of five stars.
