Mati Diop

Mati Diop (born 22 June 1982) is a French film director and actress. She won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for her feature film debut, the supernatural romantic drama Atlantics, and the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival for her second feature film, the documentary Dahomey. As an actress, she is known for the drama film 35 Shots of Rum (2008).

Early life
Diop was born in Paris, France. Her father, Wasis Diop, is a Senegalese musician, while her mother, Christine Brossard, is an art buyer and photographer. She is the niece of filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty. During her childhood, she often travelled back and forth between France and Senegal, developing a transnational identity.

Education
Diop trained in the Advanced Degree Programme at Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art in France, as well as at the Palais de Tokyo in their experimental artist studio space Le Pavillon.

Career
Diop was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study from 2014 to 2015. While a part of the institute's selective Film Study Center Fellowship Program, she wrote the script for her first feature film Fire, Next Time. She later changed the title of this film to what is now known as her directorial feature film debut, Atlantics (2019).

Directing
Diop made her directorial debut in 2004 with her short film Last Night (2004). Her short film Atlantiques (2009) won the Rotterdam International Film Festival's Tiger Award for Short Film, and a Top Prize at Media City Film Festival during her first North American appearance in 2009.

Her documentary short Mille Soleils was released in 2013. The film focused on actor Magaye Niang, who was the star of Diop's uncle's seminal feature Touki Bouki (1973) and explained how he had come to live as a farmer in the intervening years. The film played at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and was later also programmed at the Museum of Modern Art in 2014.

In 2019, she became the first black female director to have her film premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival when her feature debut Atlantics was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or. She was one of only four women accepted into the festival in the given year. The film was a fictional adaptation of her documentary short Atlantiques made in 2009 that followed two friends from Senegal as they made a life-threatening boat crossing to Europe. The film won the Grand Prix. It was picked up by Netflix shortly following Cannes' award announcements, however it is not a Netflix Original Film.

Diop directed a documentary, In My Room, as part of Miu Miu's Women's Tales series, which blended audio recordings of her maternal grandmother, Maji, with footage Diop shot of herself in her Parisian apartment during the time she was quarantined during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Diop's work has been featured at the Venice Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the BFI London Film Festival in 2012, and the Valdivia International Film Festival, as well as the Museum of the Moving Image in 2013.

In 2024, she won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale with the documentary, Dahomey, devoted to the question of the restitution by France of works of art stolen from Dahomey, present-day Benin.

Acting
Diop made her acting debut in Claire Denis' film 35 Shots of Rum (2008), playing the lead role of a young woman in a close-knit relationship with her father, whom she has trouble leaving as she gets ready for marriage. She received a nomination for the Lumières Award for most promising actress for her role in the film. In 2012, she appeared in the film Simon Killer and was also credited with the story behind the script. Diop continues to act sporadically in films and television.

Artistry and themes
In their article on Diop's work up to Atlantics (2019), Lindsay Turner states that Diop's work is often concerned with trans-nationalism, immigration, the female experience, and post-colonialism in relation with North Africa and Europe. In order to start work on Atlantics, she began travelling to Senegal to reconnect with her African heritage. She says she found her voice in those journeys—and in her own French-Senegalese hyphenated identity. In an interview with Metal Magazine, Diop explains that she tackles cinematics and poetic aspects of her film with different perspectives due to the contrasting "sensibilities" of French and African cultures.

Diop uses aspects of magical realism in her films, examples including Atlantics (2019), Snow Cannon (2011), and Big in Vietnam (2012). Diop can also be quoted talking about her storytelling processes, notably on how she uses sets and props to convey her plots as opposed to just characters and dialogue. During additional interviews, Diop has mentioned that she has done a majority of her own cinematography and is deeply interested in multiculturalism and multilingualism in film, as her films are often in two to three different languages.