Mati Diop, a French-Senegalese actress and director, has become the first black female director to win an award in Cannes Film Festival’s 72-year history.
Diop won the Grand Prix, the equivalent of a silver prize, for her film Atlantics, a Senegalese drama about sexual politics among young migrants.
The Grand Prix award, bestowed by the jury of the festival on one of the competing feature films, is the second-most prestigious prize of the festival after the Palme d’Or.
The 36-year-old, however, said she was a “little sad” to make history as the first woman of African descent to even have a film screened at the festival.
“My first feeling to be the first black female director was a little sadness that this only happened today in 2019.
”I knew it as I obviously don’t know any black women who came here before, and I knew it but it’s always a reminder that so much work needs to be done still,” she said.
