Dahomey
November 2021. 26 royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artefacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But what attitude to adopt to these ancestors’ homecoming in a country that had to forge ahead in their absence? The debate rages among students at the University of Abomey-Calavi.
Mati Diop's diverse film work since the 2000s has established the director as a representative of a new wave of African and Afro-diasporic culture. Her feature film Atlantics won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2019. She sees cinema as a tool of reappropriation to restore lost images, question degrading colonial representations and invent new heroes and heroines.
