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.

“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