Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État takes this collision of politics and jazz, Cold War and colonialism, and lays out with cool precision the different strands of its backstory.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a dense and meticulously constructed picture.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat relates not just Lumumba’s assassination but the larger role the Congo, a nation rich with natural resources, played in the Cold War, and the so-called Congo Crisis’ surprising intersections with midcentury American jazz.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is surely a triumph for the filmmaker, but it is also, more sorely, a sad reflection of our nation’s unwillingness to acknowledge its crimes while hoping they fall into historical oblivion.