Mati Diop

“When I started writing the script, I realized that I hadn’t really seen any film with a black couple that was worthy of Romeo and Juliet…And through Ada and Souleiman I wanted to relate a similar kind of tragic love, in the age of rampant capitalism.”

“My family history is made of migration; it’s something that’s part of my own complexity.”

“As a mixed [-race] girl, there’s always a visible and invisible side of you; there’s a place you inhabit and place you desert,” she says. “How does the place that you don’t live in influence you?”

“I started to watch the ocean. I was not looking at it like I used to; it became like a grave.”