Soundtrack to a Coup d'État

After almost a century of brutal colonial exploitation by Belgium, Congo state became an independent country in 1960: the Democratic Republic of Congo. The first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, wanted the country's many natural resources to benefit the Congolese themselves, and this did not go down well with the West. Add to this the fact that Lumumba was an inspiration for the civil rights movement in the US and that he had sought rapprochement with the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War, and it becomes clear, filmmaker Johan Grimonprez shows, that his fate was sealed: after a coup d'état, Lumumba was arrested and eventually assassinated.

Grimonprez also extensively highlights a lesser-known side of this history: how the CIA used black jazz musicians for its purposes. Big stars like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington went on tour in Congo, not just to create goodwill, but mainly to distract attention from the role the CIA had played in the coup.