Watch the First Official Trailer for History-Making Senegalese Film, 'Atlantics'
The award-winning Netflix original, could become the first Senegalese feature to earn an Oscar nomination.
Atlantics, the award-winning feature directorial debut from French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop now has its first official trailer.
The film, which will be released as a Netflix original, won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, making Diop the first black woman to win an award at the festival. It has the potential to make history once again, as it's been submitted as Senegal's Oscar entry for Best International Film. If it earns the nomination, it will be the first-ever nomination for the country, as noted by Shadow & Act.
READ: Senegalese Filmmaker Mati Diop Tells a Haunted Story of Migration
The film, described as a "ghost love story" also touches on poignant themes of migration, inspired by the real-life experiences of Senegalese migrants who braved dangerous journeys to Spain in search of opportunity—stories which Diop centered in the first Atlantiques, a documentary-style short that led to the creation of the full length film. "I felt that my cinema should be put at the service of their voices," she told OkayAfrica in an interview last month. "I wanted to understand."
Then newly released trailer shows the supernatural love story between its protagonists Ada and Souleiman and the complicated societal factors that shape their relationship.
Here's the official description of the film:
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.
Set in Senegal's capital city, "Diop's directorial vision turns Dakar into a place of both surreal magic and harsh reality," wrote OkayAfrica contributor Anya Wassenberg about the the movie following its screening at TIFF. "The film immerses the audience in the city's sounds, from the goats bleating outside a window while Ada and her friends talk, to voices in the next room, with the eternal heaving of waves against the shore as a recurring refrain."
The film is set to be released in select theaters on November 15 and will make its Netflix premiere on November 29. Watch the trailer below.