Dahomey

Name: Dahomey
Genre: Documentary
Released: October 25, 2024
Duration: 68 min
Rating: 85
Cast: Gildas Adannou, Habib Ahandessi, Joséa Guedje

2024

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Universal acclaim based on 23 Critic Reviews

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Movie Details & Credits

MUBI | Release Date: October 25, 2024 | Not Rated

Starring: Gildas Adannou, Habib Ahandessi, Joséa Guedje

Summary: The journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin. Diop artistically voices a new generation's demands.

Director: Mati Diop

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 68 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Sarah-Tai Black

Nov 7, 2024

Diop’s latest documentary film is a poetic witnessing of the contradictions, mediations and politics of cultural restitution. Read full review

Liam Lacey

Oct 30, 2024

In a sense, Dahomey, which runs just over an hour, is also a ghost story as well as a creative conversation between the past and present. Read full review

Alison Willmore

Oct 29, 2024

If the rest of the film takes a somber, poetic perspective on the symbolic and literal nature of this partial restoration of a lost heritage, its youth represents a bold, discordant, and exciting counterpoint — vital and engaged, looking toward a future they demand be better than the past. Read full review

Pat Brown

Mar 8, 2024

Mati Diop’s captivating, fabulistic documentary Dahomey confronts the reality of how modernity has been shaped by the West’s theft of cultural heritage. Read full review

Alissa Wilkinson

Oct 25, 2024

Most interestingly, we listen in on young Beninese as they discuss the wider repercussions in an open forum. . . It’s a rich conversation that rapidly lays out the controversies and bigger issues at stake. Read full review

Donald Clarke

Oct 24, 2024

The cool, often static shots and unhurried editing are characteristic of a school of documentary film-making that allows the viewer complete freedom to shuffle significances. There is a beauty in the empty precision. Read full review

Collider Emma Kiely

Oct 23, 2024

Dahomey may not be for everyone. Unless you’re a history nut or anthropologist, there will be lulls when you find your concentration lagging. However, at a runtime of just over an hour, Diop makes every shot count and packs centuries of history, injustice, and triumph into a dense but vivid documentary. Read full review

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