Nominated for the 2025 Lux Audience Award, see the full nominees here.

November 2021. Twenty-six royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave the vaults of a Parisian museum to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artifacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. On the journey home, we hear the charismatic, sonorous voice of one of the icons, King Gezo, who muses lyrically and ironically on the sculptures’s fate. Mati Diop’s cerebral, unconventional documentary-hybrid chronicles the journey home of these symbols of colonial greed, and debates ideas of restitution and repatriation of cultural heritage; winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, Dahomey is an illuminating and engaging contribution to the ongoing conversation about the legacy of colonialism in Africa.

Notes by David O’Mahony.