"A Meditation on the Stigmas of Colonization": Mati Diop on Dahomey

Mati Diop likes summoning spirits. In 2019's Cannes-premiering Atlantics, the ghosts of young Senegalese men lost in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Dakar come back to haunt people in their bid to demand what is rightfully theirs. In her latest hybrid documentary, Dahomey--which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale this year--she exorcises the spirit of artifacts looted by the French from the West African kingdom of Dahomey between 1892-94. After centuries of lying inert in Paris' Musée du quai...