Songea, Tanzania residents in “The Empty Grave” tending grave of Maji-Maji Rebellion chief Mbuna, whose head was taken to Germany and never returned

In director Mati Diop’s powerful “Dahomey”, a competitor for the Berlinale’s Golden Bear top prize, a wooden statue of the 19^th-century Dahomey warrior King Ghezo, making a gesture with his right arm that resembles a Black power salute, is shown being packed in a wooden case for a trip from a Paris museum back to his native land, now called Benin.

An actor’s voice, filtered to sound unnaturally deep and speaking the Fon language of Benin, expresses King Ghezo’s anger and frustration at having been “cut off from the land of my birth as if I were dead” for so many years, plundered by French colonial soldiers and stored at the Musée du Quai Branly archaeological museum.

A new and almost blindingly white exhibition space was built in Benin’s capital Cotonou to house 26 treasures that were repatriated in 2021, on orders of French President Emmanuel Macron, and went on display in February 2022 after years of political and diplomatic haggling.

Diop films the exhibition opening, which provides a pageant of colourful African pagne dresses by the women, an occasion for a jubilant public to celebrate, plus some touching images of Beninese looking at magnificent statuary from their past that they never before had a chance to see.

But Diop’s film, a hybrid of documentary and poetic licence, makes it clear that the return of King Ghezo, plus his throne, a towering statue with the head of a lion and a human body, and the other artefacts, is not the end of the story.

Returning 26 of an estimated 7,000 African treasures held in France “is an insult”, a young Beninese man says during a lively discussion forum that Diop filmed in conjunction with the museum opening. Rose, another participant, laments that not only was her heritage stolen by the French colonists, she has to express herself in French because her native Fon language was largely suppressed under colonial rule.

The issue of repatriation of looted African treasures has been very much to the fore in this year’s Berlinale, a festival known for dealing with hot political topics. Diop got interested in the subject because, as she said at a press conference, “I realised nothing was really where it ought to be.”

The Germans come in for their own drubbing in “Das Leere Grabe” (The Empty Grave), co-directed by Agnes Lisa Wegner of Germany and Cece Mlay of Tanzania, which is one of the three countries that made up former German East Africa.

The empty graves in question are those that should be filled with the bodies of Tanzanian fighters killed by the German colonisers in the 1905-1907 Rebellion of Maji Maji which left 75,000 to 300,000 people dead, mostly from famine.

In the southwestern Tanzanian city of Songea, residents have erected a memorial to the dead of the Maji Maji rebellion, and in particular to almost 70 chieftains who were hanged by the German authorities after the rebellion was crushed.

They also take special care of the grave of Chief Nduna Songea Mbano, who was decapitated, and whose head was shipped to Germany. Thousands of bodies or skulls of other dead Africans were taken to Germany where many wound up in the collection of the 19^th-century anthropologist Felix von Luschan. He conducted studies to determine racial differences and is famed for having a developed a chromatic scale for gradations of skin colour.

To the people of Tanzania, the absence of the remains of their ancestors breaks a link in the spiritual chain. “It’s really difficult to understand the inhumanity” of people who would take away the dead, a young woman says.

John Makarius Mbano, a grandson of the chief, and his wife Cesilia visit Germany to try to locate the skull of his ancestor, and advance the agenda of returning human remains to their country of origin. In one of the film’s most touching scenes, John and Cesilia enter a room to view two Songea skulls whose identities are otherwise unknown. They enter the room without a camera, but with a microphone, which catches them saying a prayer over the skulls, whose DNA tests later prove negative to a relation to Chief Mbano.

Wegner said that hearing the short ceremony was a powerful moment for the film crew.

“What we did not expect was the prayer,” she said in a Q&A. “To say that we were all sitting quietly in tears would be an understatement, because it was beyond moving.”

By Michael Roddy