This award-nominated documentary explores the intersection of music, politics, and power.

Music has always been a powerful political tool, used in both protest and propaganda. But it has also been used to cover up governmental misdeeds.

In his 2024 documentary, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, Belgian multimedia artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez uses found footage, music, and journalism to piece together the story of the West's assassination of the Congolese Prime Minister in the early 1960s.

The film unveils how music, and musicians themselves, were deployed to distract from governmental misdeeds and soften public opinion of serving politicians.

Grimonprez weaves together evidence of years of political immorality, unknowingly propped up by a jazz movement that was becoming a hugely powerful tool in itself.