The first trailer has arrived for Mati Diop’s Atlantics, which will bow as a Netflix original film.
The film, which won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, is the feature film directorial debut of director Mati Diop.
Diop made history as the first Black woman with a film in the Competition section of the Cannes Film Festival. It could make history once again at the Oscars, as Atlantics is Senegal’s official entry for Best International Feature Film. If nominated, it would be the very first film from Senegal to get nominated for the Oscar.
Diop is the daughter of jazz musician Wasis Diop and the niece of groundbreaking director Djibril Diop Mambéty. Mambéty, a pioneer in the world of African cinema, directed the 1973 film Touki Bouki.
Originally titled Fire Next Time, the film is based on Diop’s 2009 short film, Atlantique. Atlantics, set in Dakar, Senegal, tells the story of a woman whose life is upended by the sudden disappearance of her lover. The mystery surrounding his disappearance unfurls when the bodies of his friends wash up on a Dakar beach.
Here’s the official description: After a group of unpaid construction workers disappears at sea one night in search of a better life abroad, the women they have left behind in Dakar are overwhelmed with a mysterious fever. Ada, 17, secretly grieves for her love Souleiman, one of the departed workers, but she has been promised to another man. After a fire breaks out on her wedding night, a young policeman is sent to investigate the crime. Little does he know that the aggrieved workers have come back as haunting, possessive spirits. While many of them seek vengeance for their unpaid labor, Souleiman has come back for a different purpose–to be with his Ada one last time.
Atlantics hits select theaters November 15 and will arrive on Netflix November 29.
Watch the trailer below:
READ MORE:
Meet Mati Diop, Niece Of Great Senegalese Director Djibril Diop Mambéty And A Talent To Watch
Mati Diop, the niece of Djibril Diop Mambéty, to make feature debut with ‘Fire Next Time’
Photo: Netflix
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