The Haunting Senegalese Love Story That Stunned Cannes
In Atlantics, the Cannes Grand Prix–winning film by the French-Senegalese director Mati Diop, the water is both a threat and a source of comfort. With soft camerawork and pointed dialogue, Diop casts a shadow over the sea and all its possibilities. In a scene near the movie’s end, the dusky-pink sky hangs over a long shot of ocean waves as one of the protagonists whispers a mysterious voice-over to the lover he was forced to leave behind: I felt your weeping dragging me to shore.
A drama of palpable yearning and astonishing grace, follows Ada, a 17-year-old girl living inupends the stark realism with which many migrant narratives are told: There is no documentary footage spliced in, no ominous cuts to the strife that awaits Souleiman and the other men in Europe. The result is a transportive love story with an undercurrent of social critique that manages to be at once haunting and hopeful.
