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 LĂŠopoldville, 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?