Pesch, Katrin2023-01-262023-01-262022https://necsus-ejms.org/realism-as-ontological-unrest-digital-aesthetics-andreparative- dynamics-in-mati-diops-atlantics/https://mediarep.org/handle/doc/20369Grounded in Dakar’s elemental properties as much as manifestations of immaterial and virtual presence, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s film Atlantics (2019) embodies what Thomas Elsaesser has described as a post-photographic realism of world cinema. In this article, I show how Atlantics collapses divisions between the evidentiary and the ghostly within the same realist impulse to create a reparative postcolonial aesthetic. Furthermore, as seen in the lucid depiction of Dakar’s clairvoyant nights, the ontological unrest of the film’s post-photographic realism also happens at the level of image aesthetics.engCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Genericontological turnmaterialityvirtualdigital night filmmakingneocolonialism79130010.25969/mediarep/191982213-0217