Film Review: Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

5 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | Feb. 22, 2025

There is something to be said for not knowing anything in advance about the fascinating new documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, which knocked me out with its fresh and creative riffs and the depth of 20th-century history it brought back to life.

Using found footage, newsreels, and existing materials, the film is woven together beautifully into a fusion by the writers Johan Grimonprez and Daan Milius. At first, their tone seems almost improvisational. By the climactic end, you feel the full payoff of their disciplined and genius groove.

The soundtrack at work in the film’s title is America’s most iconic export: jazz. The coup d’etat is the century-long colonization of the African country of Congo. How they are connected is the riveting narrative arc of the film, and it includes such dreamy realities as the United Nations air-dropping record players from the sky and famed artists Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, and Dizzy Gillespie discovering they’d become unwilling tools of the CIA.

Music, politics, minerals, and the Cold War combine into a complex backstory behind the 1961 assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the covert operations of cultural diplomacy and espionage that led to it.

Other stories have explored how jazz music’s symbolism of freedom and American culture was strategically deployed as a tool in the struggle for influence in the newly independent nations of Africa, but the revelations in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat about the tragic fate of Lumumba and the dark multinational roles in these geopolitical maneuvers are shocking.

Belgium director Grimonprez prominently features and pulls excerpts from the books My Country, Africa by Andrée Blouin; Congo Inc. by In Koli Jean Bofane; To Katanga and Back by Conor Cruise O’Brien; and audio memoirs by Nikita Khrushchev, former Prime Minister of the Soviet Union. (The filmmaker was inspired to make the project after seeing brief archival footage of Khrushchev hitting his shoe on the podium at the United Nations, and you’ll find out why.)

Far from being academic or a “moldy fig,” these tools are splashy and powerful in a visual typography that communicates to the beats of the music and rolls out this political thriller step by step. It keeps you on the edge of your seat in what can only be described as a polytonic tone poem in the traditions of the master docs When We Were Kings (1996) or Senna (2010).

It should be obvious by now how much of a role music plays in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, but every choice is so precise that I think you’ll be hearing and feeling jazz in an entirely new way.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival before going on to other monster international praise, including a sweep of awards from the International Documentary Association.

Like any gem, you have to hunt for it. The film is in limited theatrical release right now, but this critic recommends watching it free through a Kino Film Collection trial subscription available on Amazon Video (and enjoy a week of access to a huge collection of other smart and accomplished films too).

In a media world that seems to lack all nuance and patience and trust in the audience, how this art piece about political manipulation, artistic freedom, and the lasting impact of colonialism ended up existing, I’m not sure. But I’m sure glad it does, and I hope you seek it out.

Not rated and running 2 hours and 30 minutes, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat contains both English and French with subtitles. It has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards.