In November 2017, the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, pledged to return works of art stolen from African countries during the colonial era. Among the 90,000 sub-Saharan works listed in French collections, one of them, claimed by Benin, crystallises all the stakes of these restitutions: the God Gou, which is now enthroned in the Pavillon des Cessions of the Louvre. "Gou, the return of a statue" retraces the odyssey of this sculpture whose major influence on the history of art over the last 150 years remains unknown.
A documentary by Laurent Vedrine selected for the Vues d'Afrique 2021 Festival