Dahomey

A visually rich, intellectually engaged meditation on colonial theft, cultural reclamation, and the spiritual weight of repatriated artifacts told through the voices of historians, students, and the objects themselves.

Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.