Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Set against the fevered politics of 1960, the film traces how jazz and decolonization collided at the United Nations, where newly independent nations and Cold War powers contested the future of a continent. Musicians, diplomats, and activists move through demonstrations, backroom maneuvers and onstage performances, their recordings and broadcasts becoming the soundtrack to a coup that reshaped geopolitics. Tension mounts as artistic expression is enlisted by rival agendas, and intimate portraits of performers reveal how music both soothed trauma and galvanized resistance.

Blending archival footage, rare live recordings, and contemporary interviews, the film unfolds as an audiovisual meditation on cultural diplomacy, moral compromise, and the costs of political intervention. It juxtaposes the improvisational spirit of jazz with the unpredictable violence of political change, asking what it means when art is caught between liberation and manipulation—and how those reverberations still echo in global power struggles today.