SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT

United Nations, 1961: as the Global South ignites a political earthquake, the U.S. State Department sends jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Jazz, colonialism, and espionage collide, constructing a riveting historical roller coaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the subsequent assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Told entirely through interwoven archival material and featuring jazz icons and Cold War luminaries from Nina Simone to Nikita Khrushchev, Johan Grimonprez’s Sundance award-winning documentary brilliantly interrogates the intersection of radical art and global politics within colonial history to tell an urgent story highly resonant in today’s geopolitical climate. A Kino Lorber release.