Five years after the drama Atlantique (grand prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival), director Matti Diop looks at the documentary with Dahomey, released this week in our cinemas. Combining art, politics and fantasy, the feature film, crowned with the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlinale, has been particularly well received by the French press, with an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 (on AlloCiné, 26 for media).
It is the third best movie of 2024, behind No Evil and Dune: Part Two.
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November 2021 Twenty-six royal treasures from Dahomey prepare to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, which has become Benin. Along with several thousand others, these works were looted in 1892 during the invasion of French colonial troops. But how can we experience the return of these ancestors to a country that had to build and adapt to their absence?
While the spirit of the artwork is released, a debate rages among students at the University of Abomey-Calavi.
What does the press think?
According to Liberation:
“A documentary with fantastical leanings that openly frequents fiction, the film is a charming success in freestyle, containing gaps in colonial prejudices. Its dark outbursts, its stoic poetry, renew the mark of a filmmaker who wanders fearlessly beyond a subject. Film or flat narrative.” By Sandra Onana – 5/5
According to Le Journal du Dimanche:
“Matti Diop returns with this brilliantly protean and polyphonic documentary.” by Baptiste Theon – 5/5
According to Les Inrockuptibles:
“Poem and pamphlet, documentary and fantasy film, an act of powerfully decolonial cinema, Dahomey invents a magical political cinema.” By Jean-Marc Lalanne – 5/5
According to Le Monde:
“The young Franco-Senegalese, daughter of the musician Vassi Diop, niece of the film director Djibril Diop Mambet (1945-1998), signs today Dahomey, her strangest film in every way. Short, intense, emotional, impure.” By Jacques Mandelbaum – 4/5
“A shocking freestyle success”: Rated 4.2 out of 5, this is a must-see movie this week!
According to Marie Claire:
“Dahomey is a short film, but with powerful and fascinating virtues, whose formal hybridization breaks all codes and academicism – history, as they sometimes wanted to tell it to us.” by Emily Barnett – 4/5
According to Télérama:
“A Profound Reflection on Art and Colonization Around Works Returned to Benin by France.” by Louis Guichard – 4/5
According to the Prime Minister:
“The strength of the new film by Matti Diop (Atlantique…), a recent Berlinale Golden Bear, lies in its theme of France’s restitution of several works of art from Benin and the language used to describe the art. A reflection prompted by such an event.” by Thomas Baura – 4/5
According to Cahiers du Cinéma:
“Dahomey (Golden Bear in Berlin) dreams of this ‘catch-up’ that will turn the subject into subject and seen into the eye, adapting his staging to the newfound freedom of these figures.” By Elodi Tamayo – 3/5
Source: Allocine
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
