The Berlinale on Saturday crowned a 41-year-old Franco-Senegalese director, Mati Diop, for a documentary on the burning issue of the restitution by former colonial powers of works of art stolen in Africa.
By rewarding a film which directly addresses the post-colonial question, the jury chaired by Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, the first black personality to occupy this prestigious position, remained faithful to the political tradition of this festival.
“We can either forget the past, an unpleasant burden that prevents us from evolving, or we can take responsibility for it, use it to move forward,” declared Mati Diop upon receiving his prize, after quoting the Martinican intellectual Aimé Cesaire.
“As a Franco-Senegalese, Afro-descendant filmmaker, I have chosen to be one of those who refuse to forget, who refuse amnesia as a method,” she continued.
Dahomey recounts the restitution in November 2021 in Benin of 26 works looted in 1892 by French colonial troops. A movement started over the last five years by the former Western powers, including France, Germany and Belgium.
Mati Diop, daughter of a Senegalese musician, Wasis Diop, and a mother working in art, who was born and raised in Paris, had already won at Cannes in 2019 for Atlantic the Grand Prix, the highest distinction after the Palme d’Or.
The director told AFP that she would like her film to be “seen in as many African countries as possible”, “in schools and universities”.
This is the second African film to receive the Golden Bear after the South African U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (Carmen of Khayelitsha) by Mark Dornford-May in 2005. Mati Diop succeeds Frenchman Nicolas Philibert, Golden Bear last year.
Mati Diop also adds her name to a young guard of French directors who have won major awards in recent years: Julia Ducournau (Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2021), Audrey Diwan (Golden Lion in Venice the same year), Alice Diop (two awards in Venice in 2022) and of course Justine Triet, who has just dominated the Césars after winning the Palme d’Or last year in Cannes and is in the running for the Oscars.
From Quai Branly to Cotonou
To tell the story of 26 works looted in 1892 by French colonial troops in the kingdom of Dahomey, in the south-central part of present-day Benin, then made up of several kingdoms, Mati Diop makes the anthropomorphic statue of King Ghézo speak in voice-over.
In the language of Benin, Fon, he complains that he no longer has a name, only a number, “26”, in the reserves of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. He describes his uprooting from his land, his life in exile, then his recent repatriation to a museum in Cotonou, the capital of Benin.
The French presidents, Emmanuel Macron, and Beninese presidents, Patrice Talon, at the origin of this restitution which took place on November 10, 2021, do not appear in the film. The director insists on the fact that only these 26 works had been returned “compared to the 7,000 works still held captive at the Musée du Quai Branly” in Paris.
The jury of the 74e Berlinale also awarded Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan (A Different Man), prize for the best interpretation. He awarded his Grand Jury Prize to a great regular at the festival, the South Korean director Hong Sang-soo for a film with Isabelle Huppert, A Traveler’s Needsand his jury prize to The Empire by Bruno Dumont.