Atlantique

In a suburb of Senegal's Dakar, the young love between Ada and Souleiman seems worry-free. But the veil of infatuation conceals a bleak future. Ada is about to marry another man whom she does not love. And Souleiman decides to leave the country via the ocean with a group of construction workers, who have not received wages for months, in search of a better future.

A few days after the boys' departure, a sudden fire disrupts Ada's wedding party, and the neighborhood girls are overcome by a mysterious fever. Issa, a young policeman, sets out to investigate. Atlantique was the first film by a black female filmmaker to be selected for the main competition at Cannes, and was the Senegalese Oscar entry.

Note: French spoken with English subtitles. The introduction is held in English.

With introduction

“Can beauty, somehow, help to redeem the repressed and supressed?”
The film is introduced in English by Lara Perski.

Cinematic Beauty

“Beauty alone makes the whole world happy, and each and every being forgets its limitations while under its spell,” the poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller claimed. Cinema is particularly well-suited for delightful encounters with beauty. During the Cinematic Beauty film program we watch seven films, with an introduction, each of which sheds a different light on beauty. In collaboration with the University of Groningen.