Listening to Mati Diop's Atlantique : Sound Waves and the Acoustics of Memory

ABSTRACT: In an interview featured in the official press release of Atlantique (2019), Mati Diop explains how she wanted the soundtrack of her film to carry the "invisible dimension of the movie." Focusing on auditory attunement to grasp what remains inaccessible to the ocular, this article engages in an exercise of close-listening to explore the mnemonic and generative potential of Atlantique 's sounds for apprehending stories of migration between Senegal and Europe. Through an analysis of scores and ambient noises, I suggest that the filmic embodiment of those who died at sea builds on an aural register that makes the haunting return of their spirits primarily sonorous. Attentive to the sonic reverberations that punctuate the film's tracks, I further argue that acoustic waves—in their soundshifting forms—subtend an aquatic echoic memory, which counters the derealizing absence and silence of those who no longer appear on screen.