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28 November 2025 — 08:00 pm

The World's Room
Dahomey

A film by Mati Diop - M/12+
Guest Marta Lança Researcher, Editor and Cultural Programmer
Cinema · Thought

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Dahomey follows the return, by the French government, of 26 treasures looted during the colonial era to the Kingdom of Dahomey (today’s Benin). The film traces the journey of these works from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris to Cotonou, exploring the symbolic, political and spiritual impact of this gesture. Mati Diop blends documentary and poetry to reflect on restitution, historical reparation and dialogue between past and future.

After the screening, a conversation will be led by Marta Lança, an independent worker across different cultural fields such as programming, translation, journalism, research and cinema. Since 2010, she has edited the BUALA platform, which is dedicated to issues of the Global South.

Dahomey is part of EscolaNova’s cinema cycle The Room of the World, a meeting place where cinema becomes a tool for reflection and change, curated by Candela Varas.

Know + The World's Room

/ Artistic and technical credits

/Genre Documentary   /Nacionality FR · BJ   /Year 2024  
/Original version French   /Subtitles Portuguese · English  
/Directed by Mati Diop  

EscolaNova, Bordeira - Aljezur
28 November 2025 (fri) — 08:00 pm
Running time
67 min
Age Rating
M/12+
Tickets
5€ Single

Ticket office
The World's Room
Curated by Candela Varas


A dark room, a white wall, a few chairs and cushions on a wool rug. Each month, a new film is shown, always accompanied by a special guest, carefully chosen.

A film, once screened, can continue to expand through a dialogue between the audience and someone we invite to think with us. This person's role is to guide the audience in a conversation that goes beyond what the work has already revealed — someone capable of offering unexpected perspectives, suggesting new interpretations, and challenging our perceptions.

We ask whether a film can open itself to worlds beyond its own, and we seek the richness of oblique gazes that lead us through transversal paths of thought and feeling.

With this film programme from EscolaNova, which we call The Room of the World, we wish to rekindle a sense of wonder for the seventh art through a selection of sharp, poetic, political, social, and psychological contemporary cinema curated by Candela Varas in dialogue with guests from various fields of knowledge. A film and a person. A spectacle of images we watch — and then feel within us.


LISTENING

"Have we lost the ability to listen? Or are we simply forgetful — as Davi Kopenawa suggests in the book he published with Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky?
Listening is the central axis of this film programme. New affective bonds are needed between human and non-human beings, between communities, marginalised voices, or even those who do not speak but still manifest. This film selection promotes that reflection — this unforgetting, or recovery of memory — and the recognition of others (human and non-human) in creating and moving a different kind of affect."
— Candela Varas
Detailed Programme

23 may 2025
Àma Gloria
Marie Amachoukel
27 june 2025
A Queda do Céu
Eryk Rocha e Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha
18 july 2025
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis
01 august 2025
Black Dog
Guan Hu
15 august 2025
Girls wil be girls
Shuchi Talati
12 september 2025
Dios es una Mujer
Andres Peyrot
24 october 2025
Grand Tour
Miguel Gomes
28 november 2025
Dahomey
Mati Diop
12 december 2025
Savanna and the Mountain
Paulo Carneiro
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