Berlinale: “Dahomey”, by Mati Diop, Golden Our

Mati Diop, competition beast? After winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 for her first feature film, Atlantic, the Franco-Senegalese director won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale with Dahomey. A transition from fiction to documentary to tell the story of the restitution by France of 26 royal treasures from Dahomey to Benin in November 20021. 26 out of thousands looted by French colonial troops in 1892. The filmmaker first films the crating of the works at the Quai Branly museum before their repatriation to their land of origin. Among them, Number 26 speaks from the darkness – objects have a soul and a stentorian voice like Darth Vader. But Mati Diop above all gives a voice to the students of the University of Abomey Calvi. Their debate is the heart of the film. They question the fact of expressing themselves in French, the language of the colonizer, the political aims of this restitution (propaganda of Presidents Macron and Patrice Talon?), the status of these objects in a country where museography is non-existent. … Each intervention goes in a different direction. If no film can exhaust such a subject, Dahomey, quite lazy in its form, only touches on fascinating questions in 67 minutes. However, this was enough to convince Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o (12 years a slace, Star Wars, Black Panther), the first black artist president of the jury at the Berlinale.

Dahomey follows Sur l'Adamant, the first part on psychiatry by Nicolas Philibert. We can read there the affirmation of the recognition of a genre, the documentary. We can also see, implicitly, the weakness of the fiction, or fictions, proposed by the Berlin competition. However, it was necessary to complete the list.

The Grand Prize awarded to A Traveler's Needs by Hong Sangsoo looks like a hoax. We see Isabelle Huppert giving French lessons in English to South Koreans. After the Asssimil method, the Isa method, based on feeling. Unfortunately, we did not see Pepe, which earned Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias the Best Director Award. The story of a hippopotamus. Yes Yes.

The Jury Prize rewards The Empire by Bruno Dumont, a ch'ti version of Star Wars, which transforms a village in the North of France into a battlefield between the forces of Good and Evil. Currently in theaters.

The German Matthias Glasner received the Best Screenplay Prize for Sterben, the story of a couple at the end of their lives (Parkinson's, cancer) and their two children, adults with ordinary emotional setbacks. A little air of Michael Haneke, sentimentalism and more.

The non-gendered interpretation prize goes to the American Sebastian Stan for A Different man, by Aaron Schimberg. A satire on beauty, its dictates and its privileges, through an aspiring New York actor suffering from an illness that distorts his face. Stan could have shared the prize with his partner Adam Pearson, who actually suffers from neurofibromatosis, in what looks like a remake of Elephant Man by Woody Allen.

Finally, Emily Watson, for her role as mother superior in the insignificant Small Things Like These, with Cilian Murphy, won the award for best supporting role. It's well paid.