Fatima Al Qadiri On Her Shimmering and Foreboding Atlantics Score

Scoring Mati Diop’s genre-smashing, boundary-breaking Atlantics (a Jezebel favorite) pushed Fatima Al Qadiri out of her comfort zone, the electronic composer and conceptual artist says in this installment of Jezebel Quickies. Though known best for her frenetic, beat-heavy works, her Atlantics score floats more on the ambient tip. But that doesn’t mean it’s uniformly chill. It’s humid with longing and doom, a multifaceted approach to a movie whose tone is in perpetual flux.

Al Qadiri told us she’s living her childhood dream by scoring a film, and that she watched each scene on a loop as she composed. But this was more than a gig. “I was born in Dakar and left age 2, and have never been back, and the first soundtrack I do is for a film shot in the city, it’s kind of like a strange destiny,” she said.