Atlantics

"Constantly intriguing, Atlantics successfully blends its disparate elements of love story, ghost story and female empowerment into a distinctive, involving drama."

"Mati Diop, who has worked both sides of the camera as an actor (35 Shots of Rum, Simon Killer) and a writer-director of acclaimed shorts, kicks her craft up a notch with the lyrical, richly evocative ghost story Atlantics (Atlantiques), her first feature-length project, and the first film directed by a black woman to compete in Cannes' main competition."

"Diop's first feature-set in her father's home town of Dakar, Senegal-unites a wide array of ideas and genres with her intensely sensory artistry."

"Dreamy yet sensual, fantastical yet rooted in uncomfortable facts, Diop's beguiling film may even have reinvented a genre."

"Suffice to say that, shortly after a mysterious fire breaks out in Ada's ridiculously lavish marriage bed, the story becomes both a detective thriller and a ghost story rooted in elements of local folklore, and pulled off with a light, shivery touch."

"This film's power to surprise is one of its greatest pleasures, while also the source of its frustrations: don't come here looking for easy answers."