April 1958.
Organizing the Brussels Worldâs Fair, the biggest international event since the end of the Second World War, subcommissioner Robert Dumont cedes to pressure from the royal palace: there will be a âCongolese villageâ in one of the seven pavilions devoted to the settlements. Among the eleven members
of this âhuman zooâ assembled to put on a show at the foot of the Atomium is the young Tshala, daughter of the intractable king of the Bakuba. From her native Kasai to Brussels via LĂ©opoldville, the princessâs journey unfoldsâuntil her forced exhibition at Expo 58, where we lose track of her.
Summer 2004. Newly arrived in Belgium, a niece of the missing princess crosses paths with a man haunted by the ghost of his fatherâFrancis Dumont, professor of law at the Free University of Brussels. A breathtaking series of events will reveal to them a secret the former
subcommissioner of Expo 58 carried to his grave.
From one century to the next, In the Belly of the Congo confronts History with a capital âHâ to pose the central question of the colonial equation: Can the past pass?