Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

25 January 2025

In the Playhouse

Cinema

France, Belgium | 2024 | English, French, Dutch | Documentary | Unclassified 15+

Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong and more feature in this Sundance award-winning documentary from director Johan Grimonprez that brilliantly dissects the collision of jazz and geopolitics in the 1960s through archive footage.

A mind-blowingly rich tapestry of research, music, and the jazziest history lesson imaginable.

Harper’s Bazaar

Useful information:

Shortlisted for 2025 Academy Awards Best Documentary Feature

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 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.

Sydney Opera House is co-presenting Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat with Africa Film Fest Australia, a project of Arts and Cultural Exchange and Afro-Australian curators.

Presented by Sydney Opera House and Africa Film Fest Australia

Watch the trailer

Credits

Johan Grimonprez
Director, Writer

Daan Milius, Rémi Grellety
Producers

Rik Chaubet
Editor

Cast

Featuring: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Melba Liston, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus
 

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