THE MORNING LIST
The week’s outings delve into the heart of conflicts and disputes and seek to find the path to reparation. In terms of colonial history with Dahomey, by Mati Diop, a mutant documentary that accompanies the restitution of works of art in Benin. In court with the criminal case of ThreadDaniel Auteuil’s latest investigative feature film. And finally, the centuries-old dispute between humans and animals in The snow leopard, by Pema Tseden, who ventures into the highlands of Tibet.
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“Dahomey”: Statues also die
From 1892 to 1894, Commander-in-Chief Alfred Amédée Dodds (1842-1922) led the second expedition to Dahomey, at the end of which this powerful kingdom, led by King Béhanzin, fell into the hands of France. Along the way, Dodds collected twenty-six royal objects, sent them to the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro and then reinstalled them in 2000 at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. On 10 November 2021, France solemnly returned these treasures to the Republic of Benin, formerly Dahomey, where they are temporarily on display at the presidential palace in Cotonou.
Filmmaker Mati Diop wanted to follow this moment. The young Franco-Senegalese, daughter of the musician Wasis Diop, niece of the filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty (1945-1998), signs today with Dahomey his strangest film in every sense. Short, intense, heartfelt, impure. Also indescribable: documentary without pedagogy, essay without signature, reconstruction without fiction. A particular story demands the viewer’s attention: that of statue number 26, a sculpture of King Ghézo (1818-1858). It is through him that the restitution is told, by means of the invention of a voice-over. subjective » as if it came from the depths of time. J.Ma.
French documentary by Mati Diop (1h08).
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“The Wire”: Guilty Designated
At 74, Daniel Auteuil has not put his acting suit away. Rarer or less sought after in recent years, the actor, acting on the principle that you are never as well served as if you were alone, got behind the camera in the 2010s. The wireHis fifth feature film as a director, it is undoubtedly the most compelling of all. A dark and tense crime story – inspired by a news story -, a restrained and effective direction, convincing actors and an incredible twist are what bring the piece to this point.
he plays mmy Jean Monier, a lawyer who has been exonerated from criminal cases for being a repeat offender, owes his talent to having been exonerated. One night, his ex-wife (Sidse Babett Knudsen) refuses to travel under police custody. Monier, always a brave man, leaves at night to join the police station. There he meets Nicolas Milik (Grégory Gadebois), a good guy whom circumstances point to as the murderer of his wife, who was found with her throat slit. Constructed from a long flashback, the story ends in the courtroom where the fate of the accused and that of the film will be decided simultaneously. J.Ma.
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