Mati Diop: ​‘We’re wit­ness­ing an awak­en­ing of consciousness’

French direc­tor Mati Diop returns to the big screen with her hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed fol­low up to the 2019 Sene­galese com­ing-of-age ghost sto­ry Atlantics. With Dahomey, the Berlin Gold­en Bear win­ner, Diop con­tin­ues exam­in­ing the long arms of colo­nial­ism that stran­gle West African iden­ti­ty in the present day. In a taut 67 min­utes, the indus­tri­ous film­mak­er fol­lows the jour­ney of 26 arte­facts stolen from the for­mer King­dom of Dahomey as they are returned to Benin. She utilis­es sur­veil­lance and oth­er fly-on-the-wall tech­niques to depict the jour­ney, and, in a stroke of genius, Diop gives a voice to arte­fact num­ber 26, a stat­ue of King Ghé­zo. Through the statue’s eyes, and the voice and words of Hait­ian writer Maken­zy Orcel, we are encour­aged to sit with the grav­i­ty of hav­ing his­to­ry itself torn from its home­land and dis­placed. Here we dis­cuss her feel­ings on resti­tu­tion and the gen­er­a­tion com­ing up behind her. 

You said in an inter­view that it took you a long time to realise what resti­tu­tion real­ly sig­ni­fied – what does resti­tu­tion sig­ni­fy to you and at what point did the real­i­sa­tion come in the mak­ing of Dahomey ? 

The word resti­tu­tion is offi­cial­ly used to describe the process of repa­tri­at­ing objects once loot­ed by colo­nial armies. But, to my opin­ion, an ancient colo­nial pow­er like France can only repa­tri­ate. To resti­tute has a much deep­er mean­ing. Resti­tu­tion begins with us, artists, intel­lec­tu­als, film­mak­ers or activists. It’s up to us to choose the mean­ing we give it. We can’t just rely on our gov­ern­ments; we have to take charge of this ges­ture by rais­ing aware­ness in civ­il soci­ety. For me, resti­tu­tion means first and fore­most giv­ing back a voice to African youth who have been dis­pos­sessed of their his­to­ry. It also meant giv­ing back to these despoiled works their agency. 

What ques­tions were you ask­ing your­self when it came to the use of music in this film? And how were you able to trans­mit that to your collaborators? 

It’s not a score com­posed espe­cial­ly for the film, but four sep­a­rate tracks, two by Wal­ly Badarou and two by Dean Blunt. I knew very ear­ly on where each track would fit in the edit­ing. The music was in the edit­ing from the very first days of it. I nev­er changed my mind. I just met Wal­ly Badarou in Paris and he told me that all the tracks he com­pos­es are poten­tial­ly writ­ten for cinema. 

The uni­ver­si­ty debate for­mat that fea­tures in the film is so much more fresh, vital and diverse than tra­di­tion­al talk­ing heads – how did you come to include that sequence in the film? 

It’s a par­a­digm shift, a counter-nar­ra­tive. Have you ever heard young African stu­dents speak out on this sub­ject? No. And yet they are the first to be con­cerned, because it is pre­cise­ly these young peo­ple who, in addi­tion to being deprived of mobil­i­ty in the world, have been dis­pos­sessed of their his­to­ry. It was high time we took up the sub­ject of stolen arte­facts from the point of view of the dis­pos­sessed. Once again, this is also what resti­tu­tion should be about: this counter-view. 

One of my favourite quotes from the stu­dent debate is, ​‘They came and tore that from us and con­di­tioned us to think we couldn’t tear it back.’ Do you have faith this con­di­tion­ing can be com­bat­ed in younger generations? 

It’s impos­si­ble to talk about African youth in gen­er­al but I think what emerges from the debate we hear in the film is the end of a state of stu­pe­fac­tion. We’re wit­ness­ing an awak­en­ing of con­scious­ness. And that’s the key. The quote you are refer­ring to comes from a very brave activist called Habib Ahan­dessi. Habib loud­ly denounces many of the injus­tices tak­ing place in his coun­try, Benin. We real­ly must salute the courage of these young activists, wher­ev­er they come from in the world, in a con­text where free­dom of expres­sion is increas­ing­ly under threat. What recent­ly gave me the most hope con­cern­ing African youth was the demo­c­ra­t­ic rev­o­lu­tion in Sene­gal a few months ago. We owe this vic­to­ry to the young peo­ple who fought fierce­ly against the dic­ta­tor­ship to ensure that elec­tions were held in the coun­try. We’re undoubt­ed­ly at a turn­ing point, and that’s what, some­how, I want­ed to por­tray in Dahomey.