Dahomey

As decolonisation gathered force, France finally agreed in 2021, after years of negotiation, to return twenty-six artefacts held at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris to Benin. Director Mati Diop weaves fact and fiction into a visual poem in which the dead speak to the living and the spirits of the objects meet the material world, blurring the line between life and death, reality and theatre, and giving this journey of decolonisation a layered and searching reflection.

Screenings of this film