Director Mati Diop Talks About Her Oscar-Contender ‘Atlantics' [Interview]

The socio-political and supernatural blend in Mati Diop’s Cannes-winning “Atlantics,” a bewitching film from the French-Senegalese writer-director whom, after a successful jaunt in acting and directing short films, returns to her native Senegal for her feature-length debut. It’s also the first film directed by a black woman to compete in Cannes' main competition, where it was awarded the Grand Prix prize.

“Atlantics” has Diop painting with her brushstroke a vibrant portrait of Ada, a young Dakar girl in search of her lover, Souleiman, who went to sea overnight and never came back. Almost exclusively taking place at night, Ada has to eventually deal with the haunted return of her boyfriend, swallowed by the waves of the magnetic Dakarese ocean, not as a full-fledged human being, but as a ghost.

I spoke to the talented 37-year-old filmmaker about her native Senegal, what inspired “Atlantics” and the ghosts which haunt her movie.

Your film is in a way about illegal immigration and finding a better, more prosperous life elsewhere.

I wanted to learn the rational reasons why the men in my country wanted to go through the arduous and very dangerous journey of crossing that course ocean and the only conclusive answers were purely economical. If it were up to them, they would just want to stay in Dakar, be next to their families and friends, follow the traditions only the Senegalese know how to do, however, beyond rationale, to take a boat and jump into that enormously vast range of ocean takes incredible courage.

Would you call “Atlantics” a ghost story? Because it does feel like a hybrid of the socio-realism in Senegal and the spiritual-thinking of its people.

To the Senegalese, and I have shown this movie to many people in my country, this isn’t a fantasy or ghost story at all. Why? Because spirits and ghosts are actually part of the reality and traditions of their everyday lives. Watching “Atlantics” to them, when compared to a Western audience, is a different experience, it feels like real life.

As a person of Morrocan-descent this makes total sense because our culture, much like yours, is also very much ingrained in spirits, I was reminded of it watching your movie. Especially how the darker the night turns, the more sacred the story gets.

Yeah, Africa is an entirely different world than where you and I live now. The few stories that were told to me by my father or my family members in Senegal when I was a child all took place at night. I grew up with the idea that the night is haunted. Ada comes closer to herself, freer when she starts to notice the men in her town have disappeared and turned into spirits. It’s almost comforting to her that there is another world that creeps out at night. It is a meditation on night.

We find this coexistence between the real and the supernatural in your staging, both precise and nebulous. How hard was it to mix both?

The fantastic in cinema is often associated with a very formal staging and a very clear cut. I wanted that: a cinema more square, more rigorous, less agitated than a realistic style. At the same time, although I had never made a movie with such a big budget, I knew we were shooting in a country with a very small economy. It was, therefore, necessary to make a film at once accurate and alive, realistic and bewitching, demanding formally but faithful to the noise of the streets of Dakar. I do consider myself a visual artist above all, so the cinematographic language was very important, approaching the images and their composition with vivid details. That's why we find a lot of composite elements in the film: textures, reflections, windows, fabrics or shadows and halos of light. It almost felt like I was painting but my brush was the camera and the mistakes it could find in nature.

It does help that the night in Dakar looks stunning. How did you manage to pull off such visual schemas?

Oh yes. There’s that big lighthouse, the sound texture of the city and the colors inside the houses are totally transformed. I told my DP Claire Mathon to look into Michael Mann's "digital night" filmmaking, especially in “Collateral”  and “Miami Vice.” The way the night is shot in those movies is incredible.

There’s also the solemn terror of the ocean at night...

After a while, I even started to see the ocean as this holy temple.

I noticed the Ocean is shot in different visual aspects throughout the film. It almost feels like an extra character in the story you are trying to tell.

Most definitely. I agree with your assessment, the ocean represents the immigration, the economic and social plight of men who keep trying to cross that unpenetrable Ocean to Spain for a better life. The Senegalese population has a major connection to it. The objective, for many of them, is Spain but they have to face a metaphysical force to attain the destination on their own, It's man vs nature. There is something to defy. It has just become a part of our culture, when I shot the short film in 2009 there was this epidemic of people fighting the waters, many died, just to cross over to Spain.

You mention Michael Mann. What other influences did you have in making this movie?

I was influenced by imaginary African-Muslim stories and European picturesque literature for aesthetic. That fantasy aspect of the film was very much influenced by the cinema of John Carpenter, especially ”The Fog.” The atmosphere in that movie, it speaks about America at that time, just a very culturally damaged society, also very eloquent in political terms.

I do love how Carpenter has been an artist who has had a major resurgence in recent years with directors namechecking him left and right. There’s been a whole indie horror movement this decade practically dedicated to his style.

He was a very important filmmaker. I wrote the screenplay for “Atlantics” while listening to Carpenter soundtracks. It's strange to hear that American critics didn’t like his movies at first, because in Europe we always loved Carpenter. His influence is huge in Europe. There was this movie at Cannes which really surprised me called “Bacurau” and the Carpenter influence in that one was big. I tried to make the poetic in “Atlantics” menacing, much like in Carpenter’s movies.