In the 21st century, they were put on display in the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, a museum of non-European art located in Paris.

A voice-over by the Haitian writer Makenzy Orcel [fr; ht] (who wrote this part of the script), playing the object, tells of the time it spent in storage at the Paris museum, its memories of Africa and thoughts of returning to its homeland.

[16] The film incorporates footage from the surveillance cameras at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac and the Palais de la Marina in Cotonou.

[25] Dahomey was also selected to open Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section of 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival, where it was screened on 20 September 2024.

The website's critics consensus reads: "With a rigorous yet fantastical approach, Mati Diop's Dahomey provocatively uncovers the restitution and repatriation of a stolen legacy, and serves as a powerful statement for decolonization.

[37] David Rooney reviewing the film for The Hollywood Reporter described it as "Richly layered and resonant", and opined: "This directorial flourish liberates the looted treasures from being mere objects, with smart use of subjective camera by DP Joséphine Drouin-Viallard helping to make them come alive as characters.

"[38] E. Nina Rothe, writing for the International Cinephile Society, noted that the film "is important, with its message crucial to restitution providing the beginning of righting the wrongs of colonialism".

"[40] Jessica Kiang, writing in Variety in her review of Berlinale, said: "French-Senegalese director Mati Diop fashions her superb, short but potent hybrid doc Dahomey as a slim lever that cracks open the sealed crate of colonial history, sending a hundred of its associated erasures and injustices tumbling into the light."

Concluding Solomons praised the director Mati Diop and wrote: "Dahomey is a bold and memorable history lesson.

"[41] Writing for RogerEbert.com, Robert Daniels praised "inventive" Diop's "distinct approach to the seemingly straightforward topic", highlighting the film's "dreamlike score", and saying that Dahomey "fills and nourishes the viewer with urgent desires, providing space for the light that constitutes the souls of Black folk to shine brighter through repair.

"[42] Reviewing in Le Polyester, Nicolas Bardot gave the film a 5/6 rating, and stated: "Mati Diop ambitiously mixes the political and the poetic.

"[43] Nicholas Bell in Ion Cinema rated the film with three and half stars and opened his review stating, "The spirit of Ozymandias, the classic poem from Percy Bysshe Shelley, might rouse itself in one's mind during Mati Diop's short but passionate documentary Dahomey – "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!""

Concluding his review, Bell said: "Much like her 2019 narrative debut, Atlantics, Diop proves to be exceptionally adept at coalescing textures and strands in remarkably dense ways, and Dahomey is an excellent point of entry in an ongoing conversation.

During her acceptance speech, Diop called for people "to tear down the wall of silence together" and "to rebuild through restitution", which entails "bringing justice".