Atlantics is many things at once: a politically minded feminist drama, a cop movie, a sci-fi thriller, and a love story. If you were to pick a genre to best describe it, what would you choose?

Mati Diop: It’s a funny question because the idea with the movie was to avoid restricting it to only one style, and to actually invent a new genre that incorporates every style. Nonetheless, if I were to choose, I think I’d say it’s a love story. The story of Ada and Souleiman is a story about a love that’s impossible within a capitalist context, within a violent economic context. The idea explored in the film is also that a love never lived always comes back to haunt us. In this case, it’s a love that occurs in a world marked by societal dysfunctions specific to the place where they’re from. This dysfunction makes it impossible for the one most beautiful thing in the world to be: two young souls who love each other and want to be together.

You’ve made short films before. What convinced you that you were ready to direct a feature of this scale?

MD: I deeply felt that I needed to tell this story. I can even say that the story chose me. When you’re committed and you feel the strong need to do something, nothing can stop you. I worked long enough for this movie to come to life. I wrote the movie with Olivier Demangel. It was a very ambitious enterprise for a first feature film. It really took me to task. But after writing it for more than three years, I knew it was good enough to start filming it.

So it’s fair to describe Atlantics as an incredibly personal project?

MD: The story is set in Dakar and is in Wolof. It expresses things that I deeply care about. It exposes and calls out certain conditions of life, and more importantly, it offers a cinematic experience in my language. Choosing to offer to the world protagonists that are black and African, who speak their own language, is an act that went beyond cinema. To me, it was a move that was going to shake things in terms of representation and how radical we can be in storytelling.

How did you approach directing a film in a language that you don’t speak?

MD: I have been surrounded by this language since I was very young — being constantly in Senegal as a child — and I directed two other short films in that language before directing Atlantics. It’s my father’s tongue. It’s my family’s language. It’s a language to which I have a very strong connection although I don’t speak it well. It’s like a melody. It’s part of me. What made this experience possible was that most of the actors also spoke French. For practice, I organized a few coaching workshops with Ibrahima Mbaye, who plays the role of Moustapha, and I wanted those workshops to be held in Wolof, mostly, although I would give some direction in French. I am comfortable enough with Wolof that I can be in discussions without being lost. When it comes to leading the actors in Wolof, I actually wrote the dialogue. When we translated it from French, we were doing so with the actors. I knew enough Wolof to feel if it was right or not.

How deeply did you connect with Ada? At what point is Ada Mati and Mati, Ada?

MD: It’s hard for me to talk about it in a clear and explicit way because I do think that this question is in the realm of the subconscious. When the character of Ada first appeared to me, she didn’t present herself as a self-portrait. She was inspired by a girl I first met while making the short film Atlantics. As the film was coming together over the casting, shooting, and editing, I realized that the character of Ada was really a sort of self-portrait. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Ada is me and I am her. It’s not that straightforward, but it is a kind of mirror. When you invent a character like that from scratch, you definitely do reflect certain aspects of yourself.

Did you have any trepidation about writing a film in which the protagonist is promised in an arranged marriage? 

MD: To be honest, I hesitated to undertake a story on arranged marriage. Nowadays, they are rare. It still occurs in remote places, but in most Dakar neighborhoods, you couldn’t force marriage onto any girl. In the context of the movie, we’re not exploring a forced marriage per se. Ada’s parents aren’t some evil parents who are setting their daughter up. It’s an arrangement. It means that Ada is consenting and conditioned to agree since her social status and way of life is quite precarious, which leads her to think that she can’t afford to object to the marriage — because she wants to raise her parents’ standard of living.

Your father, musician Wasis Diop, is Senegalese, and your mother is French. How does your background influence the lens through which you view Dakar? Is it something you’ve made peace with?

MD: I am, by definition, crossed by two cultures that are both similar and antagonistic. As a mixed person, my identity is very mosaic, intangible, irreducible. I am crossed by all of that on top of my personality. The perspective I have toward Dakar today is the fruit of my cultural complexity. The histories of Senegal and France are intertwined, and I am the fruit of that collision, of that violence, and of that love. The story of colonialism is a story of violence, but also the story of a man and a woman who are my parents. The story of how they met is one of love. Those are complex, ambiguous, contradictory stories, and they give birth to complex entities as well.

You often mention Claire Denis as one of your influences. Which African filmmakers inspire you?

MD: Obviously, my uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty, not only through his films but mostly through the faith he had in cinema. He’s part of the filmmakers who used cinema to its full potential. Today, movies like Bamako and En attendant le bonheur from Abderrahmane Sissako, Les Saignantes from Jean-Pierre Bekolo, and Le Retour d’un aventurier from Moustapha Alassane are all movies that mean a lot to me. I’m tremendously curious to discover more about contemporary African cinema.

Atlantics was selected as Senegal’s official submission to the Academy Awards. Did you have any idea the film would be received so warmly there?

MD: The reaction was very positive and beyond my expectations. I was worried about how they would respond to it. Getting the Cannes Grand Prix was absolutely fantastic both for the movie and for myself, but I was looking forward to see whether the Senegalese audience would see themselves in the movie. I was overjoyed and comforted to notice that not only did they see themselves but they also loved the film and understood it. If that had not been the case, it would have put everything in question. One day at the Cheikh Anta Diop University [in Dakar], where we screened the movie, a young lady told me that she had seen herself through Ada. I knew then the movie had won it all.

That must feel tremendously gratifying.

MD: It’s been 10 years that I’ve carried this project with me. The movie comes out at a time when the black community as a whole, whether it be in France, in Africa, or in the U.S., is undergoing a self-assessment, and this movie comes out in a context carried by the fights led by this movement. I don’t know if 10 years ago we could have seen a young woman of my skin color walk up the stairs of the Festival de Cannes with her African actors to receive the Grand Prix. Would that have been possible 10 years ago? I don’t think so.

The most gratifying thing for me is the joy from seeing my work receive so much attention, not only from the audience but also from within the industry itself, whether it be in France, in Africa, or in the U.S. Even if each person watches the movie through a different cultural lens, the overall reception remains quite the same, and I find that very beautiful. It’s as if cinema was a universal language that connects everyone.