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Dahomey film image; man looking at small sculpture

Dahomey

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In 1892, French colonial troops plundered thousands of cultural artifacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey. In 2021, 26 of them returned to the Republic of Benin. Their journey is narrated by the statue of King Ghezo in an oneiric, lyrical monologue. While these traditional treasures are initially received with reverential pomp and circumstance, students at the University of Abomey-Calavi vigorously debate the political motivations of the restitution while discussing ongoing issues of self-determination, education, and recovering their culture’s stolen soul.

Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, Mati Diop’s first feature since her 2019 debut Atlantics is one of the year’s most innovative and profound documentaries. Infusing its historical and cultural subjects with a dreamlike atmosphere and blending reality with the fantastical, Dahomey is transformed by the interplay between the metaphysical perspective of the stolen artifacts and the incendiary insights of the students’ debate, providing a poetic scaffolding for the film to envision a new postcolonial horizon.

 

Golden Bear for Best Film, Berlin 2024

Director
Featuring

Gildas Adannou, Habib Ahandessi, Joséa Guedje

Credits
Country of Origin

France/Senegal/Benin

Year

2024

Language

In French, Fon and English with English subtitles

Film Contact
18+
67 min
Award Winners Documentary Women Directors
Les Films du Bal, Fanta Sy

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Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Christiane Chabi Kao

Producer

Eve Robin, Judith Lou Lévy, Mati Diop

Screenwriter

Mati Diop

Cinematography

Josephine Drouin Viallard

Editor

Gabriel Gonzalez

Original Music

Wally Badarou, Dean Blunt

Mati Diop headshot; Dahomey director

Mati Diop

Mati Diop, born in Paris in 1982, has garnered acclaim for her eclectic body of work since the early 2000s. Her feature film Atlantics (2019), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, established her as a leading figure in international arthouse cinema and of a new wave in African and diasporic cinema. Raised in a Franco-Senegalese family with a musician father and a photographer and art buyer mother, Diop’s films, including Atlantiques (2009) and Mille Soleils (2013), explore themes of migration, colonialism, and African identity. Her second feature, Dahomey (2024), continues her focus on artistic activism in Africa.

Filmography: Atlantique (2019)

Photo by Henry Roy

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