film

"I felt this film was my duty," the French-Senegalese director Mati Diop said of Dahomey, his exquisite 2024 hybrid documentary about the return of looted African treasures. The 26 royal artifacts in question were looted from the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) by French colonial forces in 1892. The film, which clocks in at just over an hour, captures the meticulous process of returning the treasures from Paris's Musée du Quai Branly to Benin in November 2021, intertwining documentary realism with poetic narration.

Diop documents the process from start to finish, from the careful packaging-up of the artefacts in France through their journey back to Africa and joyous celebrations on their arrival in Cotonou, Benin’s largest city. Notably, Diop personifies the artifacts, giving them narrative voices which are recorded in a collage of male and female voices. It's a bold creative decision that pays off tenfold, granting an already striking work a sumptuous extra depth.