The plunder on display (or stashed away) in the British Museum and other venerated international institutions has created a global uproar, sparking battles to return significant cultural antiquities to their rightful homes. So it’s timely that the 2024 Berlinale jury – led by its first Black president in 12 Years a Slave star Lupita Nyong’o – awarded the top prize, the Golden Bear, to Mati Diop’s (Atlantics) mercurial meditation on anti-colonialist restitution.
Dahomey may open with moonlight sparkling on the rippling Seine but this is not a Parisian story. Instead, we’re plunged into total darkness as a voice that rumbles like thunder agonises over centuries of silence languishing in captivity. The conceit of Diop’s mesmerising docu-fiction is that this discombobulated voice belongs to the statue of a king who once ruled over the bustling African city-state of Dahomey, the birthplace of Vodun (or Voodoo) now known as the Republic of Benin. But being stolen by invading French soldiers is far from his worst indignity. He isn’t proudly displayed at the Quai Branly Museum. He’s forgotten, gathering dust in a packing crate buried deep within its bowels.
Diop learned of the return of this statue and 25 other artefacts – a drop in the ocean amongst thousands still hoarded by France – while writing Atlantics and was determined to follow them home. The bewildered statue, our guide, is destined for another box, this time a clear glass, climate-controlled display case in the royal palace in a nation unrecognisably transformed.
This strange, captivating and rigorously intellectual film leaves a mighty impression
Pained musings on loss, loneliness and the nature of home follow in this tragically beautiful dance of magical realism fused with actual footage of the exacting preparations for the return trip. A heated debate at the University of Abomey forms the film’s magnificent centrepiece. One student asks if 26 items are anywhere near enough to make amends. Another champions the power of seeing oneself represented in one’s authentic culture. Powerfully, a third demands to know if children across the nation will have their travel expenses covered to view them in these hallowed halls.
At just over an hour, Diop’s strange, captivating and rigorously intellectual film leaves a mighty impression well beyond its compact length. Joséphine Drouin-Viallard’s intimately attentive cinematography leads us from meditative darkness up to the stars and back to earth in the glorious sunshine illuminating Benin’s magnificently attired citizens. Musing on destiny, place and belonging, it spans centuries in the blink of a statue’s eye. Composers Wally Badarou and Dean Blunt’s heartful score rumbles like that statue’s call in a film as rich in ideas as any king’s treasure.
Dahomey premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
