‘Dahomey’ Follows Relics’ Return to Benin in a Moving Documentary

French filmmaker Mati Diop’s evocative Dahomey centers on 26 statues and cultural objects — a handful of the estimated 5,000 pieces stolen at the end of the 19th century — that France returned to Benin in 2021. Opening Friday, Nov. 8 at the Roxie after its recent local premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, the unexpectedly inspiring documentary transports us along with the crates to West Africa, movingly capturing the immediacy of art in contemporary life.

Before the pieces deplane in Benin, however, and go on view at the Palais de la Marina (the presidential residence) in a historical and artistic celebration of national importance, Diop invites us to contemplate their painful exile in the recesses of Paris’ Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. She and Haitian novelist and poet Makenzy Orcel give the treasures an internal monologue that evokes the anguish of colonialism and the denial of self-determination.

Diop imbues the pieces with a mournful anger that contrasts with the detached attitude of museum conservators and manual laborers who treat them as physical objects to be measured, packed and forklifted. This opening section effectively makes us question the significance of relics, the relevance of history and the latent power of art.

This has been a topic of conversation forever, of course, in museums and art galleries (and beyond). It may seem more au courant in our digital world where people and events “trend” and vanish in hours. Dahomey gains another resonance in the wake of an election that indicates, among other things, that Americans are largely uninterested in the past and cannot even recall events that took place four years ago.

But let us consider instead the Kingdom of Dahomey, which flourished, in part on enslaved labor and the transatlantic slave trade, for some 300 years. After a decade of wars with France and the overthrow of its King Béhanzin, Dahomey became part of French West Africa in 1904. The Republic of Dahomey won its independence in 1960, and the country renamed itself Benin in 1975.

Mati Diop was born in Paris; she is an actor, writer and director whose acclaimed 2019 narrative feature debut, Atlantics, is streaming on Netflix. Diop’s Sengalese father, Wasis, is a musician and her late uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty, was a filmmaker. She spent her formative years in France and Senegal, which accounts for her interest in the repatriation of (some of) Benin’s looted artworks.

Once the artworks have landed in Benin, Diop exhibits both generosity and good judgment by devoting a chunk of the film (which clocks in at a succinct 68 minutes) to the opinions of the Beninese. Not through person-on-the-street interviews, mind you, but via an eloquent discussion among informed and impassioned University of Abomey-Calavi students.

This sequence is the best part of Dahomey for all sorts of reasons. The students speak beautifully about the pieces as relics from the reign of kings and symbols of Western colonialism, and also as works of art. They know their history as well as its limits; that is, they see the past primarily as instrumental in their responsibility for creating Benin’s future.

One student, in fact, downplaying the importance of the pieces still held in France, argues persuasively, “Our immaterial heritage — our dances, traditions and knowhow — are still in our country!”

Dahomey, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, is unquestionably a dark-room theatrical experience. But it also deserves a permanent venue, such as a long-term installation at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) or the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Its themes of cultural identity and ownership, and independence and self-determination, are relevant to all former colonies.

‘Dahomey’ opens Nov. 8, 2024 at the Roxie.