O fantástico e o fantasmagórico em Atlantique (2019)

Abstract

This research investigates the use of fantastic elements in the Franco-Senegalese feature film Atlantique (2019), directed by Mati Diop, examining how it can be meaningful for a counter-colonial perspective in audiovisual media. Throughout the filmmaker’s career, spectrality has been present since her first directorial work, in harmony with themes that permeate her personal life. By drawing a parallel between the literary genre of magical realism or marvelous real, predominant in Latin America, and the contemporary cinematic tendency of ghostly realism in East Asia — both aesthetics connected to the animist cultures of the artists’ countries — it is observed that Atlantique also maintains a close historical and sociocultural relationship with Senegal and with Africa, besides claiming a promising future perspective for blackness. This is achieved, through an analysis of the film and its symbolic elements, through the way Mati Diop films the characters’ drama, merging the supernatural with the everyday aspects of their lives.