Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

US jazz collides with Cold War colonial crimes in this electrifying film examining the CIA’s complicity in state-sanctioned murder – and its use of popular music to cover its tracks.

It’s 1960. As the US civil rights movement swings into high gear, in Africa another movement is taking place: decolonisation. Among the 17 nations to achieve independence during the ‘year of Africa’ is the Congo. But only months after becoming the former Belgian colony’s first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba is assassinated. In an effort to deflect attention from the CIA’s apparent involvement in the coup against him, the US turns to jazz – sending Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and more to the Congo as unwitting ‘ambassadors’. It does not go as planned.

Winning Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation, Belgian director Johan Grimonprez (Double Take, MIFF 2009) transforms the weight of history into a kinetically freewheeling thriller with Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. The film is built almost exclusively from archival footage – including recently discovered recordings of Lumumba speeches long thought lost – played alongside, underneath and intercut with the music of America’s jazz greats. Seamlessly weaving it all together with editor Rik Chaubet, Grimonprez has crafted an extraordinary work that pulses to the genre’s syncopated rhythms as it lays out an impassioned case against colonialism.

“A bravura cinematic essay that intertwines jazz, history, and the taste of a spy thriller, Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez’s unclassifiable documentary … is a mind-blowingly rich tapestry.” – Harper’s Bazaar