- Title: Award-winning film 'Atlantics' offers haunting take on life in Senegal
- Date: 13th November 2019
- Summary: DAKAR, SENEGAL (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (French) ATLANTICS DIRECTOR, MATI DIOP, SAYING: "Casting doesn't mean walking the streets hoping to find what you want by chance. For me, it was about actually meeting the characters that I wrote about. Let me give you an example: for the character of Souleiman, Ada's lover, who has been working on a construction site for sever
- Embargoed: 27th November 2019 11:18
- Keywords: immigration cinema movie netflix oscars mati diop
- Location: VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS/THIAROYE AND DAKAR, SENEGAL
- City: VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS/THIAROYE AND DAKAR, SENEGAL
- Country: Senegal
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Film
- Reuters ID: LVA004B5DDPP3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: To capture the harsh reality of life in Senegal, film director Mati Diop chose young people she met at building sites, bars and in Dakar's poorer suburbs as the stars of 'Atlantics', a ghost story about migrants and those they leave behind.
The coming-of-age tale has already won critical acclaim, securing the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and it will reach a wider audience this month when it hits U.S. cinema screens and debuts on screening platform Netflix.
The film centres on Ada, a young woman facing a forced marriage whose life unravels after her secret lover Souleiman drowns at sea. Like thousands of West Africans in recent years, he had risked his life on the Atlantic route via the Canary Islands to Europe in search of a better future.
But rather than focusing on the migrants' fate, Franco-Senegalese Diop highlights the challenges and struggles faced by many young people inside Senegal, where around half the population live below the poverty line.
"Originally I wanted to devote a movie to a specific group of youth that had disappeared at sea trying to reach Spain for a better future, to find work. And it was precisely by asking myself how I would address the subject of a youth that is sacrificed that I realised it was very delicate to make a movie about this because you take the risk of locking an entire youth and an entire country within the theme of immigration, and that was everything which I did not want to do," said Diop.
According to International Organisation of Migration (IOM) figures for 2015, 60 percent of the Senegalese population is under 25 and wage earners live on an average of 6$ a day.
In 2006, 30,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands and some 7,000 people died trying to make the crossing, rights groups say.
Those figures fell with the tightening of borders and a slight increase in sea patrols which pushed migrants onto land routes through Niger and Libya to Italy.
Diop wants her film to re-focus her audience's attention away from the numbers and back onto the individuals and the reality of their lives at home in a country struggling to forge a future and create jobs for its youth.
To preserve authenticity, Diop chose not to employ professional actors in key roles. She met Ibrahim Traore, who plays Souleiman, on a construction site.
Other cast members were found outside night clubs or in the streets where the film is set.
"Casting doesn't mean walking the streets hoping to find what you want by chance. For me, it was about actually meeting the characters that I wrote about. Let me give you an example: for the character of Souleiman, Ada's lover, who has been working on a construction site for several months without pay, so he's being exploited, I went myself on a construction site to cast him, to find Souleiman amongst the workers," she said.
Twenty-six year old Amadou Mbow plays inspector Issa, a policeman who ends up being possessed by Souleiman.
Recalling one of the scenes he plays in a busy street in Thiaroye, Mbow says Diop really did succeed in capturing the reality she was looking for.
"Everything that was covered in the movie is real, everything that was covered exists in Senegal. It's true young people don't take to the sea like before but it was a reality and still is, so it's really Senegal's reality, forced marriage, exploitation of the youth," Mbow said.
Diop found him as he was leaving a nightclub and was looking for a taxi.
"I met Mati Diop by chance, it was really a wild casting, I remember it was a Saturday, I was with a friend and I was fed up with the place we were in so I went out to catch a taxi and that's when a lady saw me, from what I was told she saw me laughing or something like that, that little smile," he said.
Mbow was not interested at first thinking the film was just a small project that would go nowhere. If he hadn't taken Diop's business card and called back to hear about her vision for the film he would not have walked, a few years later on the red carpet in Cannes when the film won the prestigious Grand Prix.
Diop said she first got the idea for the film in 2013, when she was shooting Milles Soleils, a short film on Dakar.
She said that was when she first encountered the youth of Dakar, how it struggled, how it strived to survive, how it shone and she saw for herself the effects of migration on the Senegalese society and the country.
"It's the loss of a loved one, the loss of the person she really loves, Souleiman, his disappearance, and the way she experiences that loss, that will open her eyes to the importance of living her life in accord with her desires and values," Diop said about Ada.
And it is also about finding a path and future through the loss.
"Of course a movie is an invitation to redefine what is possible through the eyes of the characters, it's an invitation to imagine things differently, to project yourself, to instill other perspectives, a different way of seeing things," she said.
Atlantics will represent Senegal at the Oscars next year for the Best International Feature Film category. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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