African Apocalypse (2020)

Directed by

Rob Lemkin

Genre

documentary

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 28m

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man traces the path of a brutal colonial officer in Niger, uncovering the lasting impact of his massacres on local communities. The film connects this historical violence to the same era when Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness.

investigativesoberingeducationalsomberreflectivehistoricalpoignantthought-provoking

What happens

African Apocalypse is a 2020 documentary film directed and produced by Rob Lemkin. It features Femi Nylander and was produced by Geoff Arbourne and David Upshal. The film portrays a journey from Oxford, England, to Niger on the trail of a colonial killer called Captain Paul Voulet. Voulet’s descent into barbarity mirrors that of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Nylander discovers that Voulet’s massacres happened at exactly the same time when Conrad wrote his book in 1899. In Niger, Nylander meets Nigerien communities along the route of Voulet’s trail who have lived with the legacy of his destruction. The film was broadcast by the BBC in May 2021 as an episode of the Arena documentary series. Among other critical attention it received, African Apocalypse was described by Phil Hoad in The Guardian as a "fascinating historical documentary-cum-personal journey. ...[Nylander] is doing invaluable work here, disinterring another collectively obscured tragedy and presenting it back to Europe as part of a long-overdue revision of colonialism." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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