The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
Film round-up: October 24, 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
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
Dahomey (PG)
Directed by Mati Diop
★★★
WINNER of the coveted Golden Bear award at this year’s Berlinale, Dahomey is an immersive and haunting work from co-writer director Mati Diop which explores the effects of colonisation, appropriation, self-determination and restitution.
It follows the return in November 2021 of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey by the French government. They were among thousands of others plundered by French colonial troops in 1892.
More from this author
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
ANGUS REID time-travels back to times when Gay Liberation was radical and allied seamlessly to an anti-racist, anti-establishment movement
ANGUS REID speaks to historian Siphokazi Magadla about the women who fought apartheid and their impact on South African society
Similar stories
Yorkshire chills, tangled in the dark web, pregnancy diaries and brackish juice: MARIA DUARTE reviews Starve Acre, Red Rooms, My First Film and Beetlejuice
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger; Our Mothers; Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes; and The Almond and the Seahorse
Vegan sermons, undercut snobs, fake messiahs and mash-up horror. The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Could Never Go Vegan, Jeanne Du Barry, The Book of Clarence, and Abigail
Reviews of Les Amazons d’Afrique, Adrianne Lenker, and John Surnam