Mati Diop

EARLY LIFE

Mati Diop was born on 22 June 1982 in Paris, France. Her father is the Senegalese musician and composer Wasis Diop, and her mother is the French art buyer and photographer Christine Brossard. She is the niece of the acclaimed Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty (director of the landmark film Touki Bouki, 1973). She grew up primarily in Paris but frequently travelled between France and Senegal during her childhood. This dual upbringing shaped a transnational identity that later became central to her artistic work, exploring themes of exile, hybridity, memory, migration, and postcolonial experience.

CAREER

Diop began exploring creative mediums (including music and photography) in the early 2000s and worked in theatre creating sound and visual designs. She trained at Le Pavillon (Palais de Tokyo) around 2006 and at Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art. As a director: She made her directorial debut with the short Last Night (2004). Key early works include the documentary short Atlantiques (2009, Tiger Award at Rotterdam), Snow Canon (2011), Big in Vietnam (2012, Tiger Award at Rotterdam), and Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns, 2013), which revisited the legacy of her uncle’s Touki Bouki through the actor Magaye Niang. Her feature debut, Atlantics (Atlantique, 2019)—a supernatural romantic drama set in Dakar about migration, loss, and ghostly return—premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. She became the first Black female director to have a film compete for the Palme d’Or. The film won the Grand Prix and was later acquired by Netflix. Her second feature, the documentary Dahomey (2024), examines the restitution of 26 royal treasures looted from the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) by France. It won the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival. Other works include shorts such as In My Room (2020, part of Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series), Liberian Boy, Olympus, and collaborations. She has also directed music videos (including for her father) and participated in collective projects. Her films often blend fiction and documentary, incorporate magical realism, and address transnationalism, immigration, the female experience, and postcolonial themes. She has done much of her own cinematography on earlier works. As an actress: Diop made her acting debut in the lead role of Joséphine in Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum (2008), earning a nomination for the Lumière Award for Most Promising Actress. Other credits include Simon Killer (2012, also story credit), Fort Buchanan (2014), Hermia & Helena (2016), Both Sides of the Blade (2022), and various shorts and television appearances. She was a Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center Fellow (2014–2015), where she developed the script that became Atlantics. Her work has screened at major festivals (Venice, Toronto, New York, BFI London, Rotterdam, etc.) and institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and Museum of the Moving Image. She has received numerous awards and nominations, including the Lincoln Center Martin E. Segal Emerging Artist Award (2016). In 2025 she undertook a U.S. university tour presenting Dahomey and discussing cultural restitution and decolonization.

Diop’s cinema is frequently discussed in relation to African and diasporic narratives, influences ranging from American independent filmmakers to her familial cinematic heritage, and a commitment to multilingual, multicultural storytelling. She lives and works between Paris and Dakar.