Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

In this staggeringly informative video essay with tremendous archival footage—a World Cinema Grand Jury Prize contender at Sundance 2024—learn how the CIA, the United Nations, jazz musicians, and seemingly the entire colonized world fought over the fate of midcentury Congolese independence and newly elected prime minister Patrice Lumumba.

A rigorously researched and inventively presented recounting of events that led to the assassination of Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba, SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT is an essential piece of documentary filmmaking. In the 1960s, the United States sent artists, such as Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, to the Congo, acting as unknowing pawns to draw attention away from the coup it enacted. From there, the film paints a dense tapestry of global corruption that draws the line between colonialist political actions abroad with the civil rights struggle in 1960s America. Demonstrated in the film is art’s capacity to be both a pawn of the oppressor and a weapon against it, as well as how decades-old global conflict can be reflected in the present day. Set to an invigorating and nonstop set of jazz music, SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT is bursting with vital history. —C.F.