Mati Diop

Diop, whose Atlantiques and Big in Vietnam were both featured in Wavelengths, has made her most ambitious film yet with this documentary about Magaye Niang, the lead actor of Touki-Bouki, the 1972 classic made by the director's legendary filmmaker uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty. Shot in Dakar and Alaska, Mille Soleils mystifies as it searches for an origin, its lineage and its transcendent deviations, flouting its own premise as fantasy merges with reality: the sad-eyed cattle herder who embodied the seminal role in Touki-Bouki forty years ago is now filled with longing for the vanished past and a future that was never meant to be. A film of haunting beauty, both sensuous and febrile, Mille Soleils is intimate and raw but also refreshingly quixotic, and confirms Mati Diop as a major cinematic talent.

Short lo-fi film set in Senegal. Mostly focussing on a group of Senegalese youths, discussing their hopes and fears concerning the crossing of the atlantic to get to Europe. Will life be easier there or not?

Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned.