Mati Diop makes her Oscars bid with the first Atlantics trailer

Nobody made out quite so hand­some­ly at this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val as Mati Diop. She brought her first fea­ture Atlantics to the Croisette and scored a cov­et­ed Com­pe­ti­tion slot right off the bat. Then, she picked up the Grand Prix dur­ing the awards cer­e­mo­ny, essen­tial­ly the festival’s sec­ond-place prize. She even land­ed a dis­tri­b­u­tion deal while still on site at the Riv­iera, ink­ing with Net­flix for an awards-sea­son release in the fall.

Diop’s whirl­wind suc­cess will soon be sub­ject to the tastes of the pub­lic, as Atlantics nears the date that it’ll appear in the stream­ing giant’s con­tent library. And today, Net­flix has released the first trail­er, a valiant effort to sum­ma­rize an unusu­al­ly dif­fi­cult-to-con­vey film.

Diop expands on themes she’s toyed with in her capac­i­ty as an actress (she once starred in Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum) and short film direc­tor, weav­ing togeth­er racial dynam­ics and romance and sci-fi into one slip­pery cre­ation. She sets her scene in a sub­urb of the Sene­galese metrop­o­lis Dakar, where work­ers have built a fore­bod­ing spire tow­er – and they want their money.

Their unrest over the cap­i­tal­ist over­lords’ attempt to scam them inter­sects with a ten­ta­tive courtship between local girl Ada (Mame Bine­ta Sane) and Souleiman (Ibrahi­ma Tra­oré), their love for­bid­den due to her engage­ment to anoth­er man. He van­ish­es, then returns, then there’s a bit of spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion, and some zom­bies show up, and – you know what? Just watch the movie, it’s quite good.

Our own Han­nah Wood­head said as much in her first-look report from Cannes, where she described the film as ​“an accom­plished first fea­ture, even with its faults.” The only hope now is that Net­flix will put the prop­er effort into releas­ing and pro­mot­ing their lat­est title, as opposed to the uncer­e­mo­ni­ous toss­ing-off of their Cannes 2018 acqui­si­tion The World Is Yours. With Diop’s chances for more major awards gold, they’ll most like­ly go through the trouble.

Atlantics comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 15 Novem­ber, and then to Net­flix world­wide on 29 November.