Dahomey

For centuries, the Kingdom of Dahomey, within the borders of modern-day Benin, was a central cultural meeting point in West Africa, a site of European colonial conquest and the transatlantic slave trade. In 1892, the French invaded and looted hundreds of treasures from the royal palace, alongside thousands of other works. Following years of appeals and reports, in 2021 an agreement was made for several of these artworks to be returned from France to Benin.

French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop (Atlantics, TIFF '19), whose spectral, category-defying cinema has frequently focused on identity and exile, was granted access to the multipartite process. Tracing the historic repatriation of 26 royal treasures from the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, through their crating, overseas shipping to Cotonou, condition assessment, and eventual unveiling, Diop reveals not only the material and logistical process with elegance and precision, but also summons the ghosts of displacement. Carried by the surreal, disembodied voice and restless spirit of a bronze itself (speaking in Fon) — as well as evocative music by Dean Blunt and Wally Badarou — the film is at once lean and expansive, trimmed of any extraneous elements while provocatively gesturing towards unresolved histories of colonial expansion and exploitation (with which museums the world over are rife). As a galvanizing gathering of young, cross-disciplinary Beninese students and teachers at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi fervently debate the arrival of the treasures, their impassioned arguments and ideas echo the film’s timely, political reckoning.

Winner of this year’s Golden Bear at the Berlinale, Dahomey further cements Diop as a leading voice in contemporary cinema.

ANDRÉA PICARD