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It would be his turn to speak.
What Diop made instead has both the weight of something true and the magic of something imagined.
Once in Benin, the movie opens up.
The termrestitutioncould describe the heart of my work, Diop told me in French.
For me, the political aspect of my work is fundamental, even central.
Thats how Ive chosen to use cinema.
But is that enough today?
This space allows them to use their own intelligence, their own sensibility.
And I think that the viewer is actually asking for more room within films, to be less hand-held.
People have said thank you aboutDahomeya lot more than well done.
As a filmmaker, I dont feel like Im sidestepping political issues.
And youve never had any fear about making political art?
Because there are risks to that.No, I am not afraid.
I think that my films protect me insofar as they avoid the pitfalls of activism.
It is not necessarily controversial.
I work a lot based on vision.
Afterwards, you have to put together a whole production to obtain this initial vision.
How do we get such an important film off the ground without money?
Its pretty delicate because no film wants to be so closely associated with a government.
But at the same time, its about restitution, its very political.
So we called upon the government, whose adviser to the minister of culture knew my work.
Within two weeks, we were able to get the governments approval and financial support.
Above all, I told them that it had to always, always, always be cinema.
If the first shots are not good, theres no film.
To never lose sight of the fact that the film was being told by them.
The film opens in Paris, on the bank of the Seine.
I also filmed Paris from my room in a film calledIn My Room.
It was a genuine shift for me, one that I made in a fairly solitary way.
It wasnt within a collective or movement of thought.
All of that encouraged me to question the relationship I had with my African origins.
There was something that I had to come and reclaim.
I immersed myself in an artistic environment in Paris.
From age 15 to 26, the majority of my references were western.
And thats not necessarily a problem.
There was this sort of awakening where I was like, Okay, Im not only French.
Im alsoDjibril Diop Mambetysniece.
I also started to really feel to what extent so-called African cinema was in the midst of disappearing.
I had a hard time seeing so little representation from the African continent by Africans themselves.
Those were really the images of my country, Senegal, that were broadcast.
My mother is French; its my father whos Senegalese.
I think the two of them took me there to introduce me to my fathers family.
There are many mixed-race children who dont get that chance.
Thats really lucky.It is.
My mother, who is white and French, did the work of transmission that my father didnt.
Because I was close with my family, because I felt at home there.
It gave me the strength to free myself from questions of legitimacy.
That is a gesture of restitution for me.
The works inDahomeysuffered a number of events tied to colonial history.
They were distorted and then redefined by an outside gaze.
The questions they might express Am I going to recognize the country I left, will I be recognized?
those are all questions that may have crossed my mind as a mixed person.
It was important for me to highlight the multidimensional aspect of their experience.
Its the soul of an entire people thats evoked through this voice.
The sound of the voice is really distinctive.
How did you construct this sound?First of all, its a language.
Ghezos voiceover was co-written with Makenzy Orcel, a Haitian writer.
The descendants of Haitians were deported during the slave trade from the gulf of Benin.
I brought in Nicolas Becker, a sound designer and artist with whom I really wanted to work.
This voice, beyond words, beyond Fon, is a texture.
It was his idea to mix different voices.
Cinema must bring out new imaginations about our histories.
Its also important to make our stories and our ancestors desirable again, inspiring …
Intimidating.Yes,even threatening.
The debate between students from a university near Cotonou is one of the most vibrant moments in the film.
Giving this debate the heart of the film was really an important statement.
The question of restitution must be raised from the African continent, starting with young Africans.
They are the people to whom restitution is destined.
So the film had to return the debate to these young people.
Outside of filmmaking, its a political gesture.
In terms of directing, I really proceeded as I would have with a fiction.
I also made sure that they had different opinions.
I chose the location, which is a pretty cinematic place because its open, a real agora.
The sequence, for me, ultimately has something utopian about it because its true and untrue.
Its true because they are speaking and saying what they really think.
But its untrue because if the film had never organized it, it wouldnt have happened.
The film came out in France several weeks ago.
I feel like it generated a little shock wave, that something really happened.
We gotthe cover ofLiberation,a lot of feedback from viewers on social media.
Weve all inherited colonial trauma, and I think this film has a healing aspect.
I feel like the film doesnt belong to me anymore.
It really allows the viewer to make it their own.
This conversation was translated, edited, and condensed for clarity.
