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‘Dahomey’ Review: Mati Diop’s Audacious Doc Offers A Provocative View Of Modern Africa – Berlin Film Festival

It is a heady mix of sometimes contradictory approaches: a documentary record showing the process of packing, sending and displaying artefacts; an architectural essay on the light and space Diop finds in galleries at both ends of the journey; a political polemic featuring students arguing with some fury about what, if anything, the restitution signifies and, riskiest of all, the fantasy of a statue come to stiff, woody life. Through Diop’s eyes, we see that the gleaming white corridors of the Musee Branly are almost exactly mirrored by those of the presidential palace’s gallery in Porto-Novo: angular, shining and unnervingly empty power-spaces, waiting to be filled with cultural capital. Title: Dahomey Festival: Berlin (Competition) Sales agent: Les Films du Losange Director/screenwriter: Mati Diop Running time: 1 hr 8 min

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