Soundtrack To A Coup d'Etat
Certainly, the best film I've seen in 2025 (so far…I know, I know, we're only a week or so in, but I've seen a bunch of them)—now playing at Film Forum NYC and available to stream for 4 or 5 bucks or so on the usual streaming sites. Sure to be on MUBI one of these days soon.
The most cogent, furious, powerfully framed and edited documentary conceivable about the 1960 CIA-backed covert assassination of Patrice Lumumba—the democratically elected president of the Congo—who was murdered in a cynical maneuver to put an end to the burgeoning decolonization movement in Africa. This film has a far-reaching resonance not only in light of the current ongoing mess in the Middle East but in terms of pretty much all human relationships (life as we live it) on Planet Earth. It covers a vast amount of territory in its 2 1/2 hours, which races by in the wink of an eye—it's that sweeping and that good.
Written and directed by Belgian multimedia artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez (hitherto unknown to me, but he has a few highly regarded films under his belt), the musical soundtrack herein comprises an urgent dialogue with the film's timely subject matter courtesy of jazz icons Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Melba Liston, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, and Ornette Coleman (several of whom—Armstrong, in particular—were used as fig leaf cultural/musical ambassadors to Africa via the State Department back in the day to mask the CIA's hidden agenda and black-op maneuvers in Africa)—and African artists Le Grand Kallé, Rock-a-Mambo, Dr. Nico, Marie Daulne, and Eddy Wally.
The film boasts memorable turns by Nikita Kruschev ranting about decolonization (with a straight face) and banging his shoe at the UN; Fidel Castro entertaining guests like Malcom X up in his suite in the Hotel Theresa in Harlem while in NYC to speak at the UN, amidst rumors of obtaining a live chicken and plucking and eating it during his stay; a stricken Adlai Stevenson witnessing Abbey Lincoln and Maya Angelou crash and disrupt the General Assembly of the UN with a posse of "Freedom Now!" activists; plus cameos from Dag Hammarskjöld dissembling before the UN; a "Man who speaks with forked tongue" Dwight Eisenhower; jazz producer and Voice of America host Willis Conover; then UN Representative Conor Cruise O’Brien; John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and various CIA apparatchiks; Col. Joseph Mobutu, who morphed into dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, once described by Norman Mailer as resembling "a snake on a stick", who went on to host the Ali /Frasier "Rumble in the Jungle" fight—and other heroes and villains.
This is a jaw-dropping essential documentary that will leave you shaken and stirred—a witness to history in the making as a series of bold individual initiatives, followed by the usual weak compromises, double crosses, and lots and lots of bad faith.
And even if you are only vaguely interested in the subject, you will here be given new eyes to see it all afresh—whatever side of the political divide you might currently find yourself on.