As I was away on holiday during this year’s local film festival, I was delighted to return home and find the festival’s programming staff had launched a new world cinema series: Global Perspectives. The series will screen one lauded international film a month beginning November 2019 and continuing on into Spring 2020.

The series kicked off with ATLANTIQUE (2019) directed by Mati Diop.

What a stunner of a first feature! And I’m certainly not the first person to respond this way: Diop, the first black woman to direct a film in competition at Cannes Film Festival, had a warm welcome at the 2019 Festival where ATLANTIQUE won this year’s Grand Prix award.

While the opening act had pacing issues for me, everything paid off as the film progressed. The look and feel of this film is something unto its own. While now widely available on Netflix, I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to see this on a big screen. There is something to the film’s energy that seeped off the screen to fill the theatre, all the while the cinematography and score creates an atmosphere that pulled me right into the story on screen. Within that story, the theme of agency — paralleled in Ada and Souleimane’s experiences — is deftly woven into a chilling ghost story.

ATLANTIQUE is a wonderful example of how refreshing it is to watch films with women at the helm. It shifts not only who is at the centre of the story but how the camera guides our attention through those stories. From the personal to the political, this film is one to add to your #52FilmsByWomen list before the end of the year. Like I did.