Film Review: Mati Diop’s ‘Dahomey’ Begs the Question, “How do we return heritage—responsibly?”
April 14, 2025
Cultural plunder has consequences far beyond the crime itself.
When heritage is looted, entire communities lose access to entire chapters of their history. Even when artifacts are returned, the question remains: How do we return heritage—responsibly?
Dahomey, a 2024 documentary film directed by Mati Diop, traces the journey of 26 royal treasures from the Quai Branly in Paris back to the Kingdom of Dahomey in the modern-day Republic of Benin.
Publicly accessible and critically acclaimed, this film is attracting significant attention to the heritage field. Dahomey has been named “Best Film” at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.
Mati Diop’s telling of the Benin repatriation is both poignant and pragmatic, documenting the often-overlooked practicalities of repatriation: from tediously inventorying and packing objects to hauling them up museum steps for reinstallation. Following a detailed portrayal of the artifacts’ journey to the brand-new Museum of West African Art in Benin City, Diop turns the microphone on Benin’s youth. Students at Benin’s University of Abomey-Calavi are shown engaging in nuanced debates about the implications of this repatriation—from political motives and economic limitations to the return’s postcolonial underpinnings.
With Dahomey, Mati Diop concisely captures the key issues of cultural repatriation and communicates the enduring harms of colonialism and cultural plunder.
Find out more about the film here.
Dr. Leslye Obiora seeks solutions to improve cultural repatriation to Africa in the AC Think Tank piece, “How Can the Protection of Cultural Property be Strengthened in Africa?” Read it here.