Skip to main content
Advertise Buy the paper Contact us Shop Subscribe Support us
A banquet of provocative film-making
RITA DI SANTO salutes the political choices made by the departing directors of this year’s Berlin Film Festival 

THE Berlin Film festival jury got it right awarding the Golden Bear to Dahomey, a film that engages deeply with key topics of our time, but also displays a distinctive, humane cinematic style.

When it showed early in the festival, it had the look and smell of a Berlinale winner; an extraordinary hybrid of fiction and documentary in which Senegalese director Mati Diop gives voice to statues, allowing them to tell their own story.

The statues are 26 royal treasures stolen by French soldiers in 1892 and finally given back to the west African country of Benin in 2021. The supervisor touches the objects, made from wood and metal, with extreme care, while the people of Benin are exalted about their arrival.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Best of 2024 / 3 January 2025
3 January 2025
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
Theatre review / 29 November 2024
29 November 2024
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
Gig Review / 6 October 2024
6 October 2024
ANGUS REID time-travels back to times when Gay Liberation was radical and allied seamlessly to an anti-racist, anti-establishment movement
Interview / 15 March 2024
15 March 2024
ANGUS REID speaks to historian Siphokazi Magadla about the women who fought apartheid and their impact on South African society
Similar stories
Cinema / 24 October 2024
24 October 2024
Colonial plunder goes home, chilly euthanasia, transsexual drug baron and venom’s end: The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Dahomey, The Room Next Door, Emilia Perez and Venom: The Last Dance
Cannes film festival 2024 / 26 May 2024
26 May 2024
RITA DI SANTO casts an eye over the winners - and the overlooked films - from this year’s festival
Cinema / 5 May 2024
5 May 2024
RITA DI SANTO looks at what is on offer
Interview / 8 March 2024
8 March 2024
ANGUS REID speaks to Tania Delgado, the director of Havana Film Festival, as Screen Cuba film festival kicks off in London