EVERY LOVE STORY IS A GHOST STORY.
Young Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) is about to be forced into a marriage with a wealthy man, but her heart belongs to Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), who’s decided to join a group of workers who in desperation leave Senegal for Europe. The director’s first feature film was internationally recognized, not least for the symbolism involved in her depiction of the refugee crisis, from an African (and female) perspective. Irresistibly enough, the film turns into a ghost story with plenty of social critique. A fine lead performance by Sane and haunting images of the mighty Atlantic Ocean and the futuristic tower on the beach built on the backs of poor workers.
2019-France-Senegal-Belgium. 106 min. Color. Produced by Judith Lou Lévy, Eve Robin. Directed by Mati Diop. Screenplay: Mati Diop, Olivier Demangel. Music: Fatima Al Qadiri. Cast: Mame Bineta Sane (Ada), Amadou Mbow (Issa), Ibrahima Traoré (Souleiman), Nicole Sougou, Aminata Kane, Mariama Gassama.
Trivia: Original title: Atlantique. Originally a short film.
Cannes: Grand Prize of the Jury.
Last word: “I felt in my imagination that the youth I could see in the streets [involved in] fires and protests were inhabited by the loss of all the boys that disappeared. I felt there was an invisible link between these two periods, that the boys who left Dakar for Spain, those who didn’t make it and who die in the sea, took something of the living with them. And that the ones in 2012 who were in the streets shouting and asking for change were also fed by their loss. Trying to make these two chapters, these two precise moments of Dakar, of Senegal, coexist was something I was interested in.” (Diop, Film Comment)
