Mati Diop’s favourites
In October, French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop chooses her selection for the Contemporary Cinema programme.
“Here is a series of films that are free in form and daring in content, made by filmmakers of African descent, atypical backgrounds and unexpected visions. They are political but entertaining; radical, but generous. I started by choosing them one by one, without intentionally relating them to each other, and ended up with what in my opinion is a selection of some of the most unusual and stimulating cinematic proposals of recent years.” Mati Diop.
Mati Diop was the first African filmmaker to compete for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival with her film Atlantique – presented in 2019 – which eventually won the Grand Jury Prize. She directed her first four short films while studying at Le Fresnoy and Le Pavillon (Palais de Tokyo). She is the niece of the great Senegalese film director Djibril Diop Mambéty, and made the documentary Mille soleils as a tribute to his film Touki Bouki. She has twice won the Tiger Award for Short Films at the Rotterdam festival: in 2010 for Atlantiques and in 2012 for Big in Vietnam.
