Dahomey in Hong Kong -- the Mati Diop documentary at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, that is! (Film review)

  

In a cinema waiting for a 2024 Hong Kong 

International Film Festival screening to begin

 

Dahomey  (France-Senegal-Benin, 2024)

- Mati Diop, director and scriptwriter

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Cinephile Paradise program

 

This postcolonial documentary was one of the films I was excited to see at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.  For one thing, Dahomey won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale.  For another, in another lifetime, I was an Africanist.  And for a third, I've long been a museophile -- and have worked in museums on four different continents. 

 

There are those who might think that Dahomey would be anti-museums. Mati Diop's film is, after all, about the repatriation of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey (~1600-1904) from museums in France where they had been on exhibit (and/or storage) to Benin, the West African state in whose territory Dahomey would be in.  

 

But, as we see in the documentary, the repatriated artefacts were/are installed upon their return to the African continent in another museum -- this one in Abomey, the old royal city of the Kingdom of Dahomey -- rather than, say, a palace or place of worship.  Something which is one of the subjects of a very interesting discussion at the University of Abomey-Calavi that was the highlight of the the film for me, and which I wish even more of it had been shown.

 

Up until the inclusion of the discussion in Dahomey, I worried that the story being presented was one that was too simple and privileging emotion.  This particularly since, early on, the words addressed to the audience was presented as monologues emanating from the artefacts themselves (rather than actual living human beings) and Mati Diop seemed most interested, in the early days after the objects' repatriation, to showing us expressions of awe and delight on the faces of those privileged to be among the first to see them back on African soil after years (centuries even) away.

 

This is not to say that there weren't individuals at the University of Abomey-Calavi discussion who were happy for the return of the Dahomey treasures to their ancestral homeland.  But, all in all, the students' exploration and interrogation as to how the people of Benin should feel about only 26 items having been returned even while thousands remain outside the country, who their return most benefits, how to make them more accessible (including to residents of Benin who live far away from Abomey, the poorer residents of the country, etc.) and so much more added much appreciated complexity to the story.  

 

In so doing, they also made this documentary offering so much more better and thought-provoking.  Kudos, really, to them.  And a reminder that the young deserve to be heard, not just the elders and ancients; and, actually, that they -- never mind Africans -- are not a homogenous bloc at all!     

 

My rating for this film: 8.0