Mati Diop (born 22 June 1982) is a French film director and actress. She won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for her feature film debut, the supernatural romantic drama Atlantics, and the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival for her second feature film, the documentary Dahomey. As an actress, she is known for the drama film 35 Shots of Rum (2008).

Diop was born in Paris, France. Her father, Wasis Diop, is a Senegalese musician, while her mother, Christine Brossard, is an art buyer and photographer. She is the niece of filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty. During her childhood, she often travelled back and forth between France and Senegal, developing a transnational identity.^[1]

Diop trained in the Advanced Degree Programme at Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art in France,^[2] as well as at the Palais de Tokyo in their experimental artist studio space Le Pavillon.^[3]

Diop was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study from 2014 to 2015.^[3] While a part of the institute's selective Film Study Center Fellowship Program, she wrote the script for her first feature film Fire, Next Time.^[3] She later changed the title of this film to what is now known as her directorial feature film debut, Atlantics (2019).^[4]

In their article on Diop's work up to Atlantics (2019), Lindsay Turner states that Diop's work is often concerned with trans-nationalism, immigration, the female experience, and post-colonialism in relation with North Africa and Europe.^[17] In order to start work on Atlantics, she began travelling to Senegal to reconnect with her African heritage. She says she found her voice in those journeys—and in her own French-Senegalese hyphenated identity. ^[18] In an interview with Metal Magazine, Diop explains that she tackles cinematics and poetic aspects of her film with different perspectives due to the contrasting "sensibilities" of French and African cultures.^[19]

Diop uses aspects of magical realism in her films, examples including Atlantics (2019), Snow Cannon (2011), and Big in Vietnam (2012).^[20] Diop can also be quoted talking about her storytelling processes, notably on how she uses sets and props to convey her plots as opposed to just characters and dialogue.^[17] During additional interviews, Diop has mentioned that she has done a majority of her own cinematography and is deeply interested in multiculturalism and multilingualism in film, as her films are often in two to three different languages.^[21][17]