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Mati Diop On Her Berlin Title ‘Dahomey’ Switching From Fiction To Documentary And Why France Must Do More To Return Looted Colonial-Era Art
'Dahomey' is Diop’s first feature since 2019’s 'Atlantics,' which won the Grand Prix at Cannes and was distributed worldwide by Netflix.
The doc — which screens in the Berlinale competition this afternoon — borrows its name from the former West African kingdom of Dahomey, located in the south of today’s Republic of Benin. Diop continued to say she initially turned to fiction rather than documentary when she first heard of France’s plan to return the cultural objects to Benin because she assumed the official repatriation probably wouldn’t happen for decades. The quantity of cultural artifacts returned to Benin is one of the central topics discussed in Dahomey, with many of the students featured in a centerpiece scene arguing that handing back just 26 works of thousands still displayed in France was a clear slight by French President Emmanuel Macron.
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