Bearing Witness Through Sound: Migration and Mourning in the Films of Mati Diop

In two recent films, Atlantiques (2009) and Atlantique (2019), Mati Diop responds to the contemporary migrant crisis – specifically to the migrations piroguières, the migration by small boat to Europe of young Senegalese men. The films explore the stories of the men who make this dangerous journey, and also attend to the women who remain behind, mourning those who die. This article examines the ways in which Diop uses sound to draw us into the ethical world of the films, engaging the spectator in a practice of listening which encompasses the linguistic and the sonic, as the films move from the fraught registering of testimony, to the sensual, sonic representation of the films’ setting, to the interweaving of historical contexts through the use of layered sonic tracks. In these ways, through sound, via voice, silence, and noise, Diop immerses us in a powerful encounter with the lives and afterlives of these young migrant men and the women who mourn them.