The Benin Project started with a video call. Naïma, Femi, and Lorna are three biracial cousins whose families are from Ouidah and Cotonou. They had felt connected to Benin their whole lives, and distant from it at the same time. They speak French, but not Fon. At the market, they are called yovo (“white person”). And yet Benin lives in them through their worldview, their way of being, their beliefs. They kept returning to a question, in life and now on screen: where are we legitimate?

Every road they tried in development led back to that question, to the dynamics of their own divided lives, their sense of never quite belonging. Eventually it became clear that the questions they were posing were the film.

So they went and made it. 21 days in Cotonou with an almost entirely local crew, singing happy birthday in Fon on set, teaching each other Dutch words and English expressions and picking up Fon ones in return. Three cousins who went looking for themselves in their parents' country, and came home with a film and memories of a shoot whose DNA was pure collaboration