United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, on-the-edge jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending “safer” jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez explores a moment when jazz, colonialism, and espionage collided, constructing a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. The result is a revelatory documentary richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons. Winning the Special Jury Award at Sundance and a plethora of awards from the International Documentary Association, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate. “A riveting, deeply researched archival mixtape with the breadth of a period epic, the soul of an activist march and the pulse-racing energy of a cloak-and-dagger thriller”—Robert Abele, The Los Angeles Times.

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