New documentary explores where 1960s music and geopolitics collided

Kino Lorber is pleased to present Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat, a vibrant, kinetic documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Johan Grimonprez.

Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat made its World Premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation, and is an official selection of CPH:DOX, IDFA, San Sebastian Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival.

Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat opens in New York on Nov. 1 at Film Forum, with national expansion to follow.

United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, 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 jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup.

Director Johan Grimonprez (dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Shadow World) 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 independence 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.

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.