Dahomey: In Mati Diop’s Dreamy Documentary, a Statue Speaks
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A-
In 2019, Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop won a grand jury prize at Cannes for her debut feature Atlantique, a ghostly fantasy in which Senegalese migrants attempting to make it to Europe drown at sea, then come back home to the city of Dakar to haunt the living.
Instead of making the jump to Hollywood— she was approached about directing The Woman King starring Viola Davis — Diop followed her debut up with the poetic documentary Dahomey, which won the Golden Bear, the top prize at the Berlin film festival last February.
In a sense, Dahomey, which runs just over an hour, is also a ghost story as well as a creative conversation between the past and present. The film follows the 2021 return of African artifacts from France’s Quai Brandy-Jacques Chirac Museum of Indigenous cultures back to their homeland in the West African country of Benin, the site of the Kingdom of Dahomey, conquered and colonized by the French in the late-19th century.
The artifacts date back to the last three monarchs, King Ghezo (1818-1858), King Glèlè (1858-1889), and its last ruler, King Béhanzin (1889-1894). Their return journey is narrated in a sense by the statue of King Ghezo (voiced by Malkenzy Ocel), a.k.a. item no. 26, in a sepulchral and electronically altered voiceover as he contemplates his long imprisonment in “the caverns of the civilized world,” and journey to his homeland.
The more traditional parts of the documentary follow museum workers carefully wrapping and crating the objects before their journey, and then their arrival, greeted by a celebratory parade in the streets of the city of Cotonou, what King Ghezo remarks is a place “far removed from the country I saw in my dreams” a former warlike kingdom dependent on conquering and enslaving its neighbours.
The film’s final section, about half its running time, consists of a forum of students from the University of Abomey-Calavi as they discuss the multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings that surround this small trove of artifacts after a century after a century in exile. Are they still sacred objects or works of art?
One young man describes the return as a “savage insult” to Benin, given the estimated 7,000 objects that still lie in former colonizers’ hands. One student views it as little more public relations stunt by French president Emmanuel Macron. Another says she was moved to tears by this reminder of her creative ancestors. Another student praises “works that give strength, power and clarity to who we are and to our contribution to world patrimony.”
Film buffs may appreciate Diop’s Dahomey as a response to Alain Resnais and Chris Marker’s 1953 film, Statues Also Die, part of which was banned in France until the 1960s because of its criticism of French colonialism.
A “dead statue” in that film was a statue that had lost its original meaning and had been reduced to a museum object. Diop’s film opens a window to some of the possible lives a reborn statue may live when returned to its homeland.
Dahomey. Directed by Mati Diop. At Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox on November 1.