Dahomey

As 26 cultural artifacts are returned from a French museum to Benin in 2021, a debate begins: is it a new beginning, symbolic politics, or an insult?

In present-day Benin, there was a kingdom called Dahomey that lasted for over 250 years. The kingdom was central to the transatlantic slave trade, and the king had an all-female army, which was one of the inspirations for the action film The Woman King. Many of the finest art pieces from the kingdom were looted, with 26 of them ending up at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. The award-winning director Mati Diop follows the journey of these objects back to Benin in a mesmerizing and almost hypnotic way. With her unique and visually impressive filmmaking, it is as if the objects come to life, telling the story of hundreds of years of colonialism and oppression.

«Dahomey is a striking, stirring example of the poetry that can result when the dead and the dispossessed speak to and through the living.»

– Jessica Kiang, Variety –

Jon Sæter

Repatriation in Practice and the Museum’s Role

The National Museum invites you to a screening of the award-winning documentary Dahomey, followed by a panel discussion on the restitution of African art and the role of museums in a postcolonial era.  

Director

Mati Diop (b. 1982) is a French-Senegalese director and actress. For her film Atlantics, she won the Grand Prix award at Cannes in 2019, and for Dahomey, she received the prestigious Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival.

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