Kino Lorber is set to release their acclaimed documentary SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT on VOD and digital platforms early next year, arriving on January 7th, 2025. The film world premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation. It launched in US theaters on November 1st, 2024.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat was directed by Johan Grimonprez, and features Louis Armstrong, Andrée Blouin, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Patrice Lumumba, Nina Simone, and Malcolm X.

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 Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup.

Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba.

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 of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.

You can find the release date on our streaming calendar. Check out the film’s official US trailer below.