SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT

(director/writer: Johan Grimonprez; screenwriter: Daan Milius; cinematographer: Jonathan Wannyn; editor: Rik Chaubet; music: Louis Armstrong; cast: Zap Mama (Narrator), Patrick Cruise O’Brien (Narrator), In Coli Jean Bofane (Narrator), Louis Armstrong, Max Roach, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Nikita Khrushchev, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dag Hammarskjold; Runtime: 150; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Daan Milius; Kino Lorber; 2024-in B/W-Belgium/ France/Netherlands-in French, Arabic, Dutch, English, Russian, with English subtitles)

“Historical documentary on jazz great Louis Armstrong.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The historical documentary on jazz great Louis Armstrong is vibrantly directed by Belgian artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez (“Shadow World”/”Double Take”) and cleverly co-written by him and Daan Milius. It claims that Armstrong was used by the government in their assassination in 1961 of the Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, its first democratically elected president.

The assassination was all about keeping colonial control of the Congo. Grimonprez points to the UN, the United States and his own Belgian homeland as responsible for the coup that took Lumumba’s life.

The film intertwines the hard realities of politics with the hot sounds of jazz, with the music sometimes out front and at other times in the background. It presents archival footage from the Cold War, the movement of African attempts to rid themselves of their colonial powers, and of the nuclear threats made at the time by Russia and the United States.

The mood jazz songs by Nina Simone and Armstrong’s powerful trumpet solos played out in a world that was becoming increasingly more dangerous.

It adequately covers Lumumba’s rise to power and his ambitions for a united African state, which greatly upset the West. It has a minimal narration, as it glumly points out the bleak legacy colonialism left behind in Africa. The black-and-white film ends with a burst of color, which might be the most optimism the film shows for the future of the continent.
It played at the Sundance Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 1/24/2025  GRADE: B
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