Imagine waking up one morning to find the person you loved had mysteriously disappeared. That’s the premise of Atlantics, the new, spectral coming-of-age love story coming to Netflix later this year.
The directorial debut from French actor Mati Diop, Atlantics follows 17-year-old Ada: a Senegalese girl torn between Souleiman, the boy she loves, and the astute businessman her family wants her to marry instead. One morning, she awakes to find that Souleiman, alongside a group of other exploited construction workers in the town, have left the city in the middle of the night, attempting to cross the Atlantic and find a better future in Europe.
Heartbroken, she’s forced to marry the man she has no love for. But after a fire breaks out on her wedding night, it soon transpired that the men have returned as spirits. Some are looking for vengeance, or to settle unfinished business. Souleiman just wants to see his lover again.
A majestic, supernatural coming-of-age romance, Atlantics has been a hit at film festivals around the world already, and made history in Cannes as the first film directed by a black woman to win the coveted Grand Prix. Since then, it’s played everywhere from Toronto Film Festival to London Film Festival, winning over critics and audiences with its heart-aching approach to storytelling and deft, painterly lens. Oscar pundits are predicting it might win a Best Foreign Language prize at the ceremony next year too.
If you like the idea of living in this sunsoaked and ghostly world for a while, you can catch Atlantics when it hits UK cinemas on 22nd November and Netflix a week later.