In 2021, 26 treasures that French colonial troops had pillaged from the African kingdom of Dahomey in 1892 made the long journey home from a museum in Paris to what is now the Republic of Benin. Their repatriation is the subject of Mati Diop’s “Dahomey,” which juxtaposes the historical account of the artifacts’ restitution and the Beninese reaction to it with imagined narration from those artifacts. The French-Senegalese filmmaker’s first feature since her Cannes Jury Prize-winning “Atlantics,” “Dahomey” is a hybrid (non)fiction film that grapples with the tragic legacy of colonialism. It won the Golden Bear in Berlin and is Senegal’s Oscar submission for best international film.
How did you come to make “Dahomey,” which you’ve called a “fantasy documentary?”
I had a feature film in mind about the theme of restitution, where I was going to make an African mask tell its own story in the first person from the moment of its [capture] until the return to its homeland.