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The Power Of The DogImage: Netflix

Netflix’s line-up of Original movies vary wildly in quality, ranging from Oscar-worthy work from some of our finest filmmakers to rom-coms one wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy. But taken together, along with the streaming service’s passable library, Netflix has one...

After attending the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 as a freelance film critic, I was excited to go this time as a film critic and reporter for Deadline. I knew that access would be different with a powerful platform and that my workload would double in size. Either way, I was prepared for the challenge. When walking down the Croisette on the way to the Palais de Festivals, the atmosphere wasn’t as welcoming as I’d hoped. As soon as I reached my destination, I noticed what was in store for me during that trip: microaggressions directed toward me because of my skin color.

According to the Miriam Webster dictionary, a microaggression is a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a marginalized group (such as a racial minority). Some of the incidents I experienced in 2019 Cannes fit the microaggression definition, but...

Jacqueline Lyanga, currently the Artistic Director of Film Independent in La, and Jasmine Jaisinghani, a film and culture professional based in La, have teamed up to present the inaugural Global Cinematheque World Cinema Awards. Seeking to give a more complete picture of the world films on offer throughout not just this past awards season, but the entire movie year, the prizes celebrate the best international cinema of year across 10 categories. Lyanga and Jaisinghani previously collaborated while working at AFI Fest.

Lyanga describes the initiative best in her statement: “Global Cinematheque and the World Cinema Awards were born of the passion for international cinema that … Jaisinghani and I share. The awards are a new platform for films made outside of the United States, through which we hope to expand the global reach of international cinema. There are extraordinary films being made all over the world and we want to bring the...

After screening at sixteen film festivals throughout 2019, French writer/director Mati Diop’s alluring debut finally arrives on general release in UK cinemas and on Netflix this month. Atlantics is a pensive, beguiling and magical socio-fantasy that follows teen construction worker Soulieman Fall (Ibrahima Traore), who, after an altercation with his manager, sets off to Spain on a row boat with work friends. Meanwhile, Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), his unrequited love, fears for Soulieman’s safety and that he won’t return in time to prevent her arranged marriage to the wealthy but vacuous Omar (Babacar Sylla). A week later and with no sign of Soulieman, Ada’s wedding to Omar goes ahead, but when a fire mysteriously breaks out on their matrimonial bed, Ada believes Soulieman might still be alive.

Mati Diop’s debut feature captivates from the outset with arresting imagery and abrupt conflict which engrosses and then...

There may not be a more potent cinegeek buzz than discovering a new filmmaker with a fully formed voice and vision right out of the gate. France’s Mati Diop has ties to African-cinema royalty — her uncle is Djibril Diop Mambéty, the man who gave the world the 1973 landmark Touki Bouki (a film with its share of famous fans). Lovers of French movies and the type of family dramas that leave you both joyous and quietly sobbing in your seat know her as an actor, specifically the young woman slowly...

“Atlantics is a film about being haunted, being spellbound, and the idea that ghosts are created within us.” – Mati Diop

The ghosts in question in Diop’s film manifest in the bodies of young Senegalese women when a group of men die at sea in search of a better life in Spain. As the women mourn their loss, the men–who left Senegal because their boss scammed them out of wages–rematerialize to seek revenge. With the help of their lovers, the men and women haunt him in a way that’s more political than Hammer House of Horror.

“Somewhere along the stretch of Senegalese coastline where Mati Diop’s feature-length directorial debut Atlantics takes place, a futuristic tower stands tall and spectral above the ocean–a sinister crossbreed between a stalagmite and a lighthouse, its lights thrusting red and warm blobs into the night,” Leonardo Goi said in our Cannes review.

Images of the North Atlantic—sunbathed, moonlit, digitally rendered in some shots but no less striking—punctuate Mati Diop’s hypnotic debut feature Atlantics (Atlantique). The waves surging the shores of Dakar, Senegal poetically encapsulate the duality that animates her soulful fable, where the ocean emerges as a central character, seductive and foreboding, a specter of past and contemporary traumas, buried and bound to resurface with the tide. Ten years ago, Diop’s original short of the same name referenced the infamous journey of the Méduse, the 19th century French naval frigate that departed from Rochefort and ran aground off the West African coast. Close to mind are kin events, the refugee crisis and—more so here than in its progenitor—memory of the Middle Passage: the voyage of no return, the moment of rupture that beget generations of two-spirited children. Perhaps no figure is more suited to convey this two-ness,...