French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop's 2024 documentary "Dahomey," chronicling the repatriation of 26 artworks formerly held by France back to Senegal, recently bagged the Golden Bear award at the current iteration of the prestigious Berlinale International Film Festival.
Mati Diop speaks on stage after winning the Golden Bear for Best Film for “Dahomey” at the Award Ceremony of the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival Berlin at Berlinale Palast on February 24, 2024 in Berlin, Germany.
'Dahomey,' Mati Diop's Contemplative Documentary
The surprisingly short 68-minute film, as per Jessica Kiang Variety's review, is a condensed "interconnectedly vast and complex" experience that is the result of the "living" speaking on behalf of the "the dead and the dispossessed."
Specifically, the documentary follows the displaced objects on their trip back home to Benin in 2021, after spending decades away from their rightful place following their theft and transferral to Paris's Musée du Quai Branly.
Ahead of the recent announcement of its win in the Berlin film event, "Dahomey" already raked in critical success, with much of critics praising its thought-provoking approach to unraveling the contentious topic concerning looted artifacts.
A review from Deadline's Stephanie Bunbury specifically commended this aspect of the documentary, saying, "Open-ended, fecund with imagination and ideas, never hectoring or lecturing, not so much posing questions as asking what questions might be posed: Mati Diop's film is a marvelous provocation."
Diop displayed a similar tempered but resolute invitation in her acceptance speech, where she said: "We can either get rid of the past as an unpleasant burden that only hinders our evolution, or we can take the responsibility and use it as the basis for moving forward."
"We have to choose," she exclaimed, before expressing solidarity with Palestine, a sentiment that was boiling on the surface during the entire award ceremony in light of the Berlinale's controversial stance regarding the Gaza conflict.
The backlash started after the festival denounced a panorama post expressing solidarity with Gaze on their Instagram account, later saying that the message "did not originate from the festival and do not represent the Berlinale's position."
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