Dahomey

French Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop follows up her sensational narrative debut Atlantics with this imaginative and pointed hybrid documentary about artistic repatriation and colonialism, which took the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. In presenting the story of twenty-six antiquities returned to Benin (which contained the Kingdom of Dahomey) by its former colonizer, France, the film sensuously details the packing up and shipping of these cultural artifacts in coruscating fashion. There’s the work of the curators in both countries, sending, receiving, and detailing the work; there’s Beninese students’ impassioned reaction to this “too-little-too-late” French apologia; and then there’s the imagined dialogue from one of the pieces, a magisterial wood-carved statue of King Gezo, as it travels back to its homeland. Brimming with insight and inferred hope for future reparations, Diop’s film memorably depicts this perhaps small but nevertheless singular moment of cultural exchange and apology.