This truly has been a year like no other, with more filmmakers of diverse backgrounds breaking through and making themselves seen. This year’s Cannes was the home to Mati Diop’s acclaimed drama Atlantics, with Diop becoming the first woman of African descent to have a movie in-competition at the esteemed festival.
Imagine stories of the women left behind when their men go off to war, and Atlantics is something like that with a supernatural twist. The story follows Ada, who grieves for the man she loves, lost along with other African men who left on a dangerous journey across the Atlantic, only to see him return as a haunting spirit.
SYNOPSIS:
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.
Netflix scooped up the rights to Atlantics base on the response out of Cannes, and plan to drop it into theaters on November 15th followed by streaming on November 29th. Senegal recently chose it as their Oscars submission for Best International Feature, which would be another big feather in Netflix’s cap during a busy awards season.
