In her groundbreaking new film Dahomey, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop weaves a spellbinding tapestry that intertwines documentary footage with poetic reflections, tracing the repatriation of looted royal artifacts from France to their native land of Benin. This visionary work, which earned Diop the prestigious Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, casts an ancient wooden statue as its enigmatic narrator, pondering the weight of exile and the resonance of infinity.
Speaking passionately about her motivations, the 42-year-old filmmaker revealed, “I felt this film was my duty.” Diop had initially planned a fictional feature exploring similar themes, but when she learned that a mere 26 items out of thousands pillaged during France’s 1892 invasion of Dahomey would be returned, she pivoted to documenting their historic journey. “I saw it happening in 2070 or 2080,” she admitted. “I couldn’t imagine it earlier—nothing in French or European politics suggested we were ready to recognize colonization as a crime against humanity.”
Confronting the Legacy of Colonialism
Central to Dahomey‘s profound impact is a riveting debate among Beninese students, grappling with the significance of the artifacts’ homecoming. As one young woman poignantly observes, even when learning about her own culture, it was through the lens of the French language—a stark reminder of colonialism’s enduring consequences.
There’s a limit to how much you can hear the word ‘colonialism’ from academic work—sooner or later, you have to hear it from the people who live with its consequences.
Mati Diop
Embracing Cultural Identity
Born in Paris to a French mother and Senegalese father, celebrated musician Wasis Diop, the director credits her mother for nurturing her connection to Africa through regular childhood visits to Senegal. “I’m very grateful to her because otherwise, I’d be like many mixed-race people, disconnected from a part of myself,” Diop reflected. “At 25, I had to fight to find the African part of me.”
This struggle against cultural erasure echoes throughout Dahomey, as does the influence of Diop’s uncle, the revered filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty. “I realized it was important for me to start my cinema where he stopped,” she explained. “Perhaps if he had continued to make films, I wouldn’t have become a director. I chose to take on his legacy.”
Confronting Appropriation and Erasure
Yet even as Diop champions her uncle’s singular vision, she remains wary of how easily cultural icons can be co-opted. When Beyoncé and Jay-Z recreated Mambéty’s famed image of a couple on a skull-adorned motorbike from his classic Touki Bouki, Diop critiqued the “unbearable lightness” of their appropriation. “I was amazed how casually Beyoncé appropriated [the image]—that’s so American, so dominating,” she elaborated. “If she’d had the decency to mention the name of the film, a million people could have discovered it.”
A Beacon of African Cinema
Undeterred, Diop has established a production company in Dakar, committed to supporting the next generation of African filmmakers. As for the future of restitution efforts, she remains cautiously hopeful: “Maybe the left will reinvent itself in reaction to [the drift towards fascism]. And maybe then, the discussion about restitution will be taken up again, and in 2070, we’ll be living in a different world.”
With Dahomey, Mati Diop has crafted an arresting meditation on memory, belonging, and the unending fight to reclaim what was stolen. As the specter of colonialism continues to haunt our present, her film serves as a beacon, illuminating the power of art to preserve, to provoke, and to guide us home.
Yet even as Diop champions her uncle’s singular vision, she remains wary of how easily cultural icons can be co-opted. When Beyoncé and Jay-Z recreated Mambéty’s famed image of a couple on a skull-adorned motorbike from his classic Touki Bouki, Diop critiqued the “unbearable lightness” of their appropriation. “I was amazed how casually Beyoncé appropriated [the image]—that’s so American, so dominating,” she elaborated. “If she’d had the decency to mention the name of the film, a million people could have discovered it.”
A Beacon of African Cinema
Undeterred, Diop has established a production company in Dakar, committed to supporting the next generation of African filmmakers. As for the future of restitution efforts, she remains cautiously hopeful: “Maybe the left will reinvent itself in reaction to [the drift towards fascism]. And maybe then, the discussion about restitution will be taken up again, and in 2070, we’ll be living in a different world.”
With Dahomey, Mati Diop has crafted an arresting meditation on memory, belonging, and the unending fight to reclaim what was stolen. As the specter of colonialism continues to haunt our present, her film serves as a beacon, illuminating the power of art to preserve, to provoke, and to guide us home.
