At the end of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, the first Franco-Senegalese female director in competition, Mati Diop, was awarded the Grand Prix for her film Atlantique.
This is the Senegalese director's first feature film. The niece of one of the great names in Senegalese cinema, Djibril Diop Mambéty, the young woman took her first steps in film as an actress (35 Rhums by Claire Denis) and then as a director with her first medium-length film entitled Mille Soleils.
Shot in Senegal, in a working-class suburb of Dakar, the film Atlantique tells the story of workers on a futuristic tower construction site who, having not been paid for months, decide to leave the country in search of a better future. The film pays tribute to the courage of migrants and those around them.