Mati Diop
Thousandsuns Cinema
Mati Diop © Jean-Baptiste Mondino, 2019
Streaming Details
MATI DIOP'S ATLANTIQUES. Online screening dates: December 2 – December 23, 2020. Films in this program: Atlantiques, 16 min, 2009.
Program Partners
Screening co-presented with the Canadian Filmmaker’s Distribution Centre. Curated by Oona Mosna.
About the artist
Mati Diop (Senegal / France) is an actress and filmmaker. She joined The Pavillon laboratory at Palais de Tokyo (2006) and studied at the National Studio of Contemporary Arts Le Fresnoy (2007). She starred in Claire Denis’ 35 Rhums (2008). As a film director, Diop’s work has been featured at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2009) Media City Film Festival (2010), BFI London Film Festival (2012), MoMI (2013), Viennale, and FICValdivia. Her short and medium-length films Atlantiques (2009) and Mille Soleils (2013) screened at MoMA in 2014. Diop was a 2014–15 Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center Fellow where she wrote the script for her first feature film Fire, Next Time. Diop later changed the title to Atlantics (2019), and was selected to premiere as the first black female director in competition at Cannes. The film, a fictional adaptation of her documentary short Atlantiques, won the festival’s Grand Prix (2019). Mati’s short film In My Room (2020), written and directed during COVID-19 confinement, made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Three young Senegalese men sit around a bonfire in Dakar at night, one describing his experience of trying to cross the ocean to Spain. As they reflect on his dangerous journey, light plays across their faces, and everything hangs in suspension. Past lives and future dreams pale against the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean. Melancholic and mysterious, the award-winning nonfiction short urgently and elegantly addresses the perils of illegal migration. Atlantiques had its North American premiere at Media City in 2010, winning one of the festival’s top awards.
