DahomeyAfrican Film Days Munich 2024
Directed by Mati Diop, Benin/Senegal/France 2023, 67 minutes, documentary, original language with English subtitles. In November 2021, 26 royal treasures from the former Kingdom of Dahomey, which were looted by French colonial troops in 1892, are returned from a Paris museum to present-day Benin.
Directed by Mati Diop, Benin/Senegal/France 2023, 67 minutes, documentary, original language with English subtitles. In November 2021, 26 royal treasures from the former Kingdom of Dahomey, which were looted by French colonial troops in 1892, are returned from a Paris museum to present-day Benin.
Among the treasures, previously displayed at the Museum of Non-European Art (Musée du Quai Branly), are statues of the former monarchs of Dahomey as well as a throne. Back in their country of origin, they are initially exhibited in a museum in the presidential palace in Cotonou.
Mati Diop’s documentary illuminates the subsequent discussions between young students at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi about how to deal with these objects in a manner often absent in European discourse.
Mati Diop, niece of the Senegalese filmmaker and actor Djibril Diop Mambéty, was born in Paris in 1982. She works as an actor and has directed shorts. Her documentary Mille Soleils (2013) follows the lead actor of Touki Bouki, a film released by her famous uncle in 1973. Her debut feature, Atlantique (2019), was awarded the Grand Prix du Jury at the Cannes International Film Festival. For Dahomey, her second documentary, she received the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
