Dahomey is a documentary by Mati Diop, a French-born director with roots in Senegal. This exceptional film packs thought-provoking ideas about culture, history, colonialism and identity into its short 68-minute run time through Diop’s inventive style.
The film charts the story of 26 artefacts looted by French colonialists after they took possession of the West African state of Dahomey (now known as Benin) around 1890. In 1898, the objects were taken to Paris and exhibited in the Musée du Quai Branly. After an agreement was reached between the two governments, they were returned to Benin in 2021.
Dahomey is a show-don’t-tell masterclass
The film is an object lesson in how to do show-don’t-tell. It has no narrative script. Instead, Diop uses a bold idea – that objects have memories. This idea is characterised through the massive statue of King Ghezo, who ruled Dahomey between 1818 and 1858. He ‘comments’ periodically throughout the film in an electronic voiceover in Fon, the language of one of the biggest ethnic groups in the country. It gives these parts of the film a genuinely eerie feel, as though we are hearing voices from the past.
The film is in two parts. In the first, we see the objects being prepared for their journey. Their condition is assessed before they are crated up and flown to Benin. There they are greeted by crowds celebrating their return. The second part examines the consequences of their arrival.
The opening sequences are shot in the bowels of the Musée du Quai Branly, a sprawling complex of mostly empty corridors, bright lights, security cameras and pipes. It’s a bleak, alien place as sterile as the exhibition case that has been King Ghezo’s home for the past 130 years. Diop imagines his feelings at leaving the museum but fearing a return to a land that has moved on: “I’m torn between the fear of not being recognised by anyone and not recognising anything.”
How does Benin really feel about King Ghezo?
This feeling of estrangement underpins the main argument explored in the second part of the film. What purpose is being served by returning these objects to their homeland? Who gains from it? This is where the film digs deeper into the ideas of culture, colonialism, the purposes of history and national identity.
In an extended sequence, university students debate the return of the artefacts. Benin is a young country (almost half the population is aged 14 or under) and it rapidly becomes clear that very few of the students have any genuine understanding of why these objects matter to their country.
One student questions why they need to be in a museum, something he deems a Western institution. Another, a young female native Fon speaker, makes the point that she is having to discuss the issue in French, the language of those who colonised her country, rather than in an indigenous tongue. Nothing expresses the gap between the celebrations that marked the objects’ return and the reality of what the population thinks about them.
Who really benefits from culture and history?
I found myself thinking about culture wars and the rows that have erupted in the UK recently over what it means to be British. Brexit, the arguments about the National Trust’s attitude towards colonialism, ownership of the Elgin Marbles, the Windrush scandal and Commonwealth demands for reparations for the harm caused by the slave trade have all been used recently (often generating more heat than light).
It’s therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that the real winners are politicians, keen to exploit such matters and use heritage as a mark of national identity, all too keen to use the matter for their own ends. Diop is of the same opinion: “Giving the royal treasures back their voice, history and language is a political gesture.”
Mati Diop: a unique talent
Diop is clearly a major cinema talent whose star continues to rise. In 2019 she became the first woman of colour to have a movie selected for competition at Cannes for her first feature Atlantics (2019) which, like Dahomey, explored the stories of those who leave Africa.
Atlantics went on to win the Cannes Grand Prix. Dahomey too has been showered with praise from critics and the industry alike, picking up the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival in February this year.
It’s therefore not difficult to imagine the film receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary and maybe even lifting the golden statue itself. It’s on release now, so you can check out how good it is for yourselves.
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