Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Belgium/France/Netherlands/2024—directed by Johan Grimonprez | 150 min.

From Congo to Harlem and back again, Johan Grimonprez’s kinetic documentary delivers the politics of decolonization in jazz form, replete with virtuosic archival riffs, historical text styled as Blue Note album covers, and musical performances by jazz legends Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Nina Simone, who in the 1960s doubled as cultural ambassadors to Africa. 

Their roles as unknowing decoys in the CIA’s efforts to “remove” Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba thread through this deeply researched, utterly fascinating, and densely textured tapestry, which scrambles the simplistic good guys/bad guys narrative. 

Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, memos, testimonies from mercenaries, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a canon of jazz icons in rare footage, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story that resonates profoundly in today’s political climate. Winner of the Special Prize for Innovation, Sundance Film Festival. In English, French, Dutch, and Russian with English subtitles. 

"Critic’s Pick! A great documentary that uses every instrument cinema affords. The result, in a word, is marvelous." –Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times