Get the latest gossip

Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey wins top prize at Berlin film festival


Film about first major return of looted treasures to Africa beat the work of several veteran directors

The 41-year-old Senegalese-French director’s one-hour film, Dahomey, follows a hoard of 26 treasures on their 2021 return journey from Paris to Benin, from where they were looted by French forces almost a century and a half earlier. Handing the best director to Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’s Pepe, an entertaining but also decidedly experimental art film about a Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos, further cemented that profile. Made by a collective of four young film-makers, the documentary follows Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who form an unlikely alliance to document the community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel’s occupation.

Get the Android app

Or read this on The Guardian

Read more on:

Photo of Mati Diop

Mati Diop

Photo of Dahomey

Dahomey