An insightful conversation with Mati Diop and Fatima Al Qadiri about their collaboration on the film Atlantics that won a Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a victory over the Western jinn, Afro-Pessimism and an overcoming of their “white periods”. “Have I ever seen a picture of a black person in the snow? Do you ever see a black person skiing? Have I ever seen a young African couple kiss with desire? Until I shot it myself, I had never seen it in a movie. The absence of black characters was so pervasive in my youth that I felt the need to multiply the possibilities in the space of one film: a love story, a crime investigation, a coming-of-age story. There are so few situations in which these genres are embodied by black people, so my attitude was: Let’s touch as many genres as we can in a single film. Let’s wildly explore! It will be both a huge liberation and a fucking pleasure, you know?”