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Overview

In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.

Top Billed Cast

  1. Cast 1

    Patrice Lumumba

    Self (archive footage)

  2. Cast 1

    Louis Armstrong

    Self (archive footage)

  3. Cast 1

    Dizzy Gillespie

    Self (archive footage)

  4. Cast 1

    Abbey Lincoln

    Self (archive footage)

  5. Max Roach

    Self (archive footage)

  6. Cast 1

    Nina Simone

    Self (archive footage)

  7. Cast 1

    John Coltrane

    Self (archive footage)

  8. Cast 1

    Duke Ellington

    Self (archive footage)

  9. Cast 1

    Nikita Khrushchev

    Self (archive footage)

Perhaps the most important objective of a documentary is to shed light on a subject and make it comprehensible and insightful for viewers, especially when it involves little-known material. However, when it comes to writer-director Johan Grimonprez’s latest offering, that goal is sorely compromised in multiple respects. The film examines (or, more precisely, attempts to examine) the complex history of the Congo’s struggle for independence from its Belgian colonial masters and the emergence of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba as a global influencer in the 1950s and early 1960s. The fledgling, res...

Status Released

Original LanguageFrench 

Budget-

Revenue $210,501.00

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