Film Festivals

2019 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 3 – Mati Diop’s Atlantique

Published on May 16, 2019

Technically speaking, Atlantique is the other feature debut in the main comp. With filmmaking in her family blood, Mati Diop the face is recognizable via Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum and Antonio Campos’ Simon Killer but her name is now synonymous with filmmaking. She got into the directing game back with the 2009 short Atlantiques and medium-length docu Mille soleils (2013). Sharing screen-writing duties here with Olivier Demangel, this Belgium, France, Senegal co-production and multilingual subtitled drama filmed on the beaches of Dakar, looks at a better future with mysterious elements to cuff this as a more haunting tale of love.

With a pair of films being shown today (late night screening of Ken Loach), Mati Diop took to the red carpet around 4:00p.m with Atlantique. So far we’ve received about half of the critics grades and we are looking at a film that could have been perhaps better serviced in the Un Certain Regard section as several critics were not on board this voyage.

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Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).