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.
In Niger, Nylander meets Nigerien communities along the route of Voulet’s trail who have lived with the legacy of his destruction.
[1] Among other critical attention it received,[2] 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.