The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Sarah-Tai Black

Diop’s latest documentary film is a poetic witnessing of the contradictions, mediations and politics of cultural restitution.

Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar

Dahomey is at its most blazingly confrontational when Diop includes footage of a panel session in which students discuss the issues at hand.

Original-Cin by Liam Lacey

In a sense, Dahomey, which runs just over an hour, is also a ghost story as well as a creative conversation between the past and present.

The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi

Dahomey begins where Statues Also Die ended, wondering what remains of our identities when the things those cling onto suddenly disappear––then resurface from oblivion. To this, Diop offers no clear answers. But in the heart-shaking passion of that university debate, in those students’ resolute commitment to reappropriate their own narratives, she finds something rarer still: a snapshot of a generation for whom this isn’t just the story of a restitution. It’s a resurrection.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Alison Willmore

If the rest of the film takes a somber, poetic perspective on the symbolic and literal nature of this partial restoration of a lost heritage, its youth represents a bold, discordant, and exciting counterpoint — vital and engaged, looking toward a future they demand be better than the past.

Rolling Stone by David Fear

Easily one of the best and most modestly brilliant piece of nonfiction filmmaking you’ll see this year.

Variety by Jessica Kiang

Dahomey is a striking, stirring example of the poetry that can result when the dead and the dispossessed speak to and through the living.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

Diop folds the poetic into the political, without ever becoming didactic.

RogerEbert.com by Jourdain Searles

Beautiful, melancholy and intellectually stimulating, “Dahomey” is a documentary that should be seen by all.

Slant Magazine by Pat Brown

Mati Diop’s captivating, fabulistic documentary Dahomey confronts the reality of how modernity has been shaped by the West’s theft of cultural heritage.