Dahomey(2024)
dir. Mati Diop
A looted statue goes home and speaks.
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In 2021, twenty-six royal treasures looted by French troops from the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892 are returned to Benin. Diop follows one artifact, a statue numbered 26, as it is packed up in Paris and carried home, and ends with Beninese students arguing over what the return means and who it is for. Part documentary, part essay, with the statue itself given a voice.
Why it’s here
It's a film about what it takes to return what was taken. What's punk is a statue that speaks and a room of students who tell the government it's not enough, twenty-six pieces out of thousands. What's pedagogical is the debate at the end: who owns history, and who decides? Pairs with Open Veins of Latin America, King Leopold's Ghost and Discourse on Colonialism. Note: short (68 minutes), slow and poetic; French, Fon and English with subtitles.
Where This Film Lives
- Topics
- colonialism
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
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Research was a colonial tool. Here is the audit.
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Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City
Tanya Talaga
Seven teens left home for school. None came back.
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Culture and Imperialism
Edward Said
How novels made empire feel normal.
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Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
Caroline Elkins
Britain's Kenyan detention camps, from the archives.
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Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
Shashi Tharoor
The case against the Raj, as a speech.
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The Fortunes of Wangrin
Amadou Hampâté Bâ
A colonial interpreter plays everyone.
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The Racial Contract
Charles W. Mills
The founding deal nobody wrote down.
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A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
David Fromkin
The deals that drew the Middle East in a hurry.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST