november11–24, 2019 | newyork 95Ibrahima Traoré and Mame Bineta Sane in Atlantics.nationalism but also its vexedrelation-
ship with the legacies of colonialism.In
May, she was the subject of a shortprofile
in The Hollywood Reporter, in whichshe
was cited as saying, “I don’tthink of
myself as white or as black. I just think
about me as me.” The quote wasanerror
of translation, she says. “I waslike,Is it
re ally gonna be like that? Peopleare
gonna ask me if I’m black or notblack?”
I suggest the mix-up may havebeena
side effect of the American media’sobses-
sion with the figure of the “tragic
mulatto,” an archetypal mixed-raceper-
son unable to escape his or herownfeel-
ings of alienation, and I ask ifa French
equivalent exists. “I don’t know,”Diop
says, laughing. “But I understand.”
When she began making filmsinSen-
egal at the age of 26, Diop encountered
an apathetic audience. “Nobodyaround
me in Paris was really interested in
Africa, even filmmakers. I felt quitemar-
ginalized at the time—a bit isolated,
actually.” Since then, she has directeda
handful of short films that dwellonthe
strange, often alienating cuspofadult-
hood. Two are set in Dakar. Her 2009
documentary short, also called Atlantics,
shares a premise with the new feature:A
young man, having returned froma peril-
ous attempt to migrate across theAtlan-
tic in a canoe, describes the efforttohis
friends as they sit by a bonfire.Soon,
cinéma-vérité bleeds into fantasy.A fever,
we’re told, descends upon thecity and
strikes the man nightly. MilleSoleils,released in 2013, harnesses mythina
similar fashion. It’s an homage toherlate
uncle’s 1973 feature Touki Bouki,which
follows a pair of young loversasthey
scheme their way into two ferryticketsto
France. The short reunites ToukiBouki’s
lead actors 40 years later, rewritingtheir
divergent fates.
From the documentary impulsesof
Diop’s previous works, Atlanticsspinsa
fantasy of retribution. The lost boyscome
back as ghosts to demand theirstolen
wages, and Souleiman, who feelsAda’s
tears in the tide that kills him, reappears
to impose life in his lover, who continues
on without him. What initially appearsto
be a personal drama morphs intoa politi-
cal phantasmagoria, only to returntothe
quotidian experience of growingup.
Diop originally crafted Atlanticsasa
survival film, stripping the genreofits
typical, action-movie-style accoutre-
ments and opting for moreintimate
exchanges: arguments betweenmother
and daughter, favors passed between
friends, sex. “The violence ofa certain
capitalist economy makes a lotoflife
fragile, vulnerable, and emptyofmean-
ing,” Diop tells me. “The film is aboutthe
beauty and innocence of lovebetween
two 20-year-olds, which is ruinedand
cut down by economic issues, withSou-
leiman having to leave by boatforSpain
because he’s unpaid and Ada havingto
marry because of social pressure.”
At the same time, Diop wantedtowrite
“a fantasy film about the loss ofthisgen-eration of boys.” For the tens of thousands
of real-life migrants who have drowned in
the Atlantic, there exists no official memo-
rial. But in Atlantics, the ghosts of the
missing boys demand to be remembered
by the skyscraper that overshadows the
city. Its image appears in advertisements
that plague the film’s scenes like omens.
The name given to it by the developers—
Muejaza—is Arabic for “miracle.”diop is the first black woman film-
maker to compete at Cannes, a designa-
tionmoreoftencitedasa testament to
her talent than as a belated recognition of
exclusion. As we descend a hilltoward
the southern edge of the park, I ask to
what extent the film’s success has forced
her to navigate the constricting narratives
around contemporary African life. “As a
mixed girl, born in Paris but alsocoming
from Senegal, I’m very aware of how Africa
was dispossessed of her own story, image,
representation.” (As she speaks, Ifeel her
tug my shoulder in an attempt to divert my
path. When I look down, I realizeshe has
saved me from stepping on a petrified
mouse, so alarmingly pristine as to appear
like the discarded work of a taxidermist.)
“In my childhood and adolescence, I took
time to understand the extent to which
Africa is denigrated in a way that is both
official and nonofficial,” she continues. “In
my filmmaking and in the way that my
films are engaged and committed in
Africa—I don’t know that reparations is
the right word, but there’s nearly a way of
reconstructing and repairing acertain
image of Africa.”
In the ten years between the releases
of Atlantics the short and Atlantics the
feature, Diop’s sense of isolation has
given way to something that approxi-
mates celebrity. Her filmmaking, once
marginalized, will now be distributed by
the world’s largest streaming platform, a
change she attributes to the burgeoning
desires of black spectators. “I think that
a lot of people like us—mixed, orcrossed
by different cultures, or partly African—
have really felt the need to reconnect
with our origins,” she says. “While I
myself was doing that reconnection, I
felt that many black people around the
world were doing the same. And voilà—I
feel that there is a certain audience for
Atlantics that didn’t exist ten years ago.”
Since the film’s debut, Diop has received
a number of messages, mostly from peo-
ple younger than she is, telling her
they’ve been waiting for a film like this.
“And I know exactly what they’retalking
about,” she says. “The lack they describe
PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF NETFLIX is one of the stories of my life.” ■