MUBI, the global film distributor, production company and streaming service has released the artwork and trailer for director Mati Diop’s captivating and thought-provoking work of art Dahomey – in cinemas in the UK & Ireland on 25 October 2024.
Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlinale, Dahomey is an immersive and astounding new documentary from Mati Diop (Atlantics). Delving into real perspectives on far-reaching issues surrounding appropriation, self-determination and restitution, this acclaimed feature is a poetic look at a seldom-discussed history.
Taking place in November 2021, the film takes as its subject 26 royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which, along with thousands of others, were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. As these artifacts are due to leave Paris to return to their country of origin: the present-day Republic of Benin, Diop questions how they should be received in a country that has reinvented itself in their absence, using ethereal voiceover and footage of debating students at the University of Abomey-Calavi to offer multiple perspectives.
By turns invigorating and absorbing, Diop’s latest uses compelling non-traditional storytelling techniques to powerfully bring the past into the present, offering an affecting though altogether singular conversation piece that is as spellbinding as it is essential.
Mati Diop’s first feature, Atlantics (2019), won the Grand Prix at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, establishing her as one of the leading figures in international arthouse cinema and the new wave in African and diasporic cinema. Her nomadic, lyrical and political cinema crosses boundaries between genres and formats, as an extension of her dual Franco-Senegalese identity and proud Creoleness.
