The Apologist

The Apologist is a thoughtful and creative documentary, which interrogates the rituals of apology and reconciliation, particularly political apologies by colonial nations.

Wide-ranging and international in scope, the film follows a stage play where a white Belgian actor collaborates with a Belgian-Congolese actress, alongside an EU political reconciliation committee and a ceremony in El Salvador honouring community members lost in a massacre. The screening on Friday 6 November will be followed by a panel discussion on decolonisation.

The screening on 6 November 2026 will be followed by a panel discussion with Rachel Johnson, Marie-Ange Zie (Co-organiser of the Festival Films Femmes Afrique in Senegal), Aylwyn Walsh (Professor of Performance and Social Change, University of Leeds), and Director Kristof Bilsen.

"What’s striking—almost disarming—is the film’s refusal to provide catharsis. Instead of neat arcs or moral closure, Bilsen lets moments hang: a rehearsed apology that feels hollow, a song that carries centuries of pain, a silence that says more than words ever could. The effect is cumulative, hypnotic." — Meredith Taylor, Filmuforia