What does a ghost represent? An emotion lingering in the sphere of time? The shadow of a tragedy cursed to echo through eternity? Perhaps it’s the weight of something tethered to a world it no longer belongs to? A ghost is essentially a memory refusing to fade away; a trace of something that once was is no more. It could be a secret, a sorrow, a story endlessly drifting through eternity waiting to be told.
In Mati Diop’s genre-blending films, ghosts manifest as voices from the past with an unrelenting desire to be heard in the present. Maji, her deceased grandmother in In the Room, begs not to be sent to a nursing home through a voice note; the spirits of migrants in Atlantique (Atlantics, 2019) demand the justice they were denied in life; and King Ghezo, a 19th-century West African ruler in Dahomey (2024), reflects on returning after centuries of isolation and displacement. Despite their differences, these voices share a common yearning, to remember the atrocities of colonialism that continue to affect us in the present day. Mati Diop’s films are revolutionary not through loud proclamations or overt calls to action, but through their ethereal poetry. Diop channels her diverse talents to craft films that give voice to the voiceless.
Like her uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty, the legendary African filmmaker whose radical storytelling changed the landscape of world cinema, Diop uses the medium as a means to challenge the status quo. She crafts films that transcends cultural binaries, using her rich lineage as a foundation to confront historical erasure, identity, and justice. Yet Diop’s work is no mere continuation of familial legacy. It is a bold, independent response to the contradictions of the modern world. In other words, the legacy she carries does not define her; rather, it informs her singular cinematic voice.
Diop first appeared in Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum (2008), where her subtle performance hinted at the depth of her artistic sensibilities. But acting was only the beginning. Transitioning to directing, her first notable works included the short film Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns, 2013), in which Mati Diop reconnects with the lead actor of her uncle’s iconic film Touki Bouki (1973), Magaye Niang, forty years later. As Niang attends a screening of the film, his memories of the past merge with his present, creating a moving reflection on time, legacy, and identity. She eventually gained international recognition with her debut feature film, Atlantique. A film that made history at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 as the first feature film directed by a Black woman to compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or. It also won the Grand Prix and was shortlisted for an Academy Award that year. The film expands upon, and reshapes the thematic and aesthetic elements of a short film, Atlantiques (2009), that Mati Diop created a decade earlier.
Set in Dakar, Senegal, Atlantique tells the story of Ada, a young woman caught between her love for Souleiman, a construction worker, and the pressures of societal expectations. Like his fellow workers, Souleiman has been unpaid for months. When he embarks on a dangerous journey across the ocean in search of a better life, Diop quite interestingly shifts the narrative to Ada’s perspective. By staying with Ada, the film takes a refreshing angle to the migrant crisis. Rather than focus on the migrants’ journey across the ocean, Diop chooses to remain in the homeland drawing attention to the communities who are left behind, the ones who are left grappling with the absence of their loved ones.
Diop constantly challenges the Western gaze to create work that reclaims the narratives of Africa by giving us a new perspective on the African diaspora. But it’s not what her films are about, but how they are about it, that sets her apart from her contemporaries. Her films occupy a liminal space between documentary and fiction, a deliberate choice that allows her to explore her characters’ deepest dreams and longings. This ambiguity is key to her aesthetic philosophy, one shaped by her purposeful use of low-grade filmmaking techniques to subvert the clean appearance of high-definition cinema. Through this resistance, Diop creates an aesthetic that is uniquely her own, raw and intimate yet universally resonant.
Consider how she captures the ocean in Atlantique. In several scenes, Diop fixes her camera on the ocean capturing both its physical and emotional significance. At the start of the film, the vast expanse of the ocean stretches endlessly, its bright shimmering surface like a portal to another world, distant, hopeful, and full of promise. It represents the dreams and aspirations of those yearning for a better life across its horizon. However, as the story unfolds, the same image shifts in tone and meaning. By the film’s end, the now dimly lit ocean transforms into a haunting liquid burial ground, holding the spirits of those it has claimed. What was once a vessel of hope and escape becomes a dark reminder of sacrifice and loss, an infinite abyss carrying the weight of unfulfilled dreams.
Diop’s work exposes the unsettling truth that the catastrophes of colonialism are not confined to history books. In fact, they continue to ripple through the present, shaping systems of labour, mobility and resistance. In Atlantique, the migrant ghosts return to their homeland to demand justice for unpaid wages. This return highlights the ongoing issues driving migration from West Africa to Europe. Their story connects the economic and social struggles of today to the past, demonstrating how global neoliberal practices and restrictive European border policies sustain the enduring systems of oppression rooted in slavery and colonial domination.
Similarly, in Dahomey, which won the coveted Golden Bear at Berlinale, the past and present seamlessly converge. Much like the perished migrants returning as ghosts, Diop once again provides the deceased a platform to speak for themselves in a world that denies them to do so. This time around, the voice of resistance belong to a possessed artefact. The film, which bridges the divide between eras, follows the journey of 26 artefacts as they are being shipped back to Benin (modern day Dahomey). The voice of King Ghezo, a ruler from 19th-century Dahomey, is juxtaposed with the voices of current residents who debate the intentions behind this international act.
The debate surrounding the return of looted artifacts to Benin reflects a deep and unresolved tension. For some, it is a long overdue acknowledgment of historical wrongs. For others, it feels like an insult, a symbolic gesture that barely scratches the surface of the vast injustices that remain. In the midst of this polarized discussion, a voice rises, calling for more than reparations. It is a call to revolution, a demand for widespread mobilization across Africa to reclaim not only stolen artifacts, but also the right to shape their own identities free from the shadow of colonial narratives.
This act of restitution is framed not as the achievement of any one individual or government, but as the materialization of bygone revolts. It’s an accomplishment that belongs to energies from the past, figures like Bio Guera, Behanzin, and the Dahomey Amazons. It is as though these historical spirits, once silenced by imperial powers, have returned to reclaim identity. This idea of the past rising to meet the present resonates deeply with Mati Diop’s cinematic vision. Diop’s work amplifies these cries from the past, compelling us to confront their implications for the present and future. In doing so, she creates a cinema through which the silenced voices of history are finally given the space to speak and the power to be heard.
Mati Diop’s films haunt viewers long after the credits start rolling. Like ghosts, her films are traces, fragments of lives, histories, and emotions that refuse to fade into oblivion. Her films transcend the typical postcolonial narrative by operating between the realms of the living and the dead, the past and the present, the material world and the spiritual, personal and political to present a body of work that reminds us that Africa’s fight to right the wrongs of colonialism are far from over.
The Cinephile Fix 