Netflix has bought the global rights to Cannes Grand Prix Winner Atlantiques and the Cannes Critics’ Week Award Winner I Lost My Body, a purchase that some say showcases the streaming giant’s push into Africa.
“The acquisition represents Netflix’s ongoing aggressive push into the African continent — a still relatively untapped source of talent and content,” Indiewire reports, referencing Netflix’s first original African series Queen Sono as well as its first African animated original Mama K’s Team 4.
Atlantiques is directed by French-Senegalese actress and director Mati Diop, who just became the first Black woman to be included the festival’s competition section, and the first Black women to win the Grand Prix. Diop is the niece of the late legendary filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty, a Cannes alumnus who won the International Critics Award for his 1972 film Touki Bouki.
Her movie is “set in a suburb of Dakar, and follows a woman who’s in love with a young worker who disappears at sea, then returns with several of his colleagues to haunt their old neighborhood,” according to Variety.
I Lost My Body from Xilam Animation follows a cut-off hand that escapes from a dissection lab to get back to its body. The animation was a Cannes Critics’ Week Award Winner and also named the best film of the independent International Critics’ Week.
Very exciting news!