Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat was one of the two documentaries that gripped my attention at the recent Hollywood awards fest. It brought back memories of journeying in a ramshackle motorboat, low on fuel to darkly lit villages along the crocodile infested Congo river. It was a dire UNICEF mission on behalf of some of the most inaccessible women and children in urgent need of succour. The meandering bends of the river had triggered random, seemingly unconnected thoughts. There was one about Kurtz, I remember, the ivory merchant in the Belgian Congo portrayed by Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness as the epitome of the darkness and brutality of colonialism.
Made by Belgian director Johan Grimonprez, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat won nomination but did not get the award.
The documentary is an eye-opener that puts together the CIA staged assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the left-leaning independence leader, and the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He was murdered, his body dismembered and dissolved in acid to destroy the evidence of the crime and with it everything that he stood for. The intelligence agencies of the US and Belgium plotted the assassination with the support of the two governments, the documentary affirms with clips of old news reels and interviews of some in the know. The conduits included the mining conglomerates, and the plot involved the services of American jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong. They were manipulated for the ‘soft power’ of their music over Africa. The film is a reminder that the colonial pelf and plunder of Congo’s natural resources symbolised by the Belgian Mr. Kurz continues unabated under today’s neocolonial imperialism. The character of Kurtz would form the basis for Marlon Brando’s role with the same name in Apocalypse Now.
The other film that grabbed me won the Oscar – No Other Land, a portrayal of the Palestinian ordeal under Israeli inhuman occupation. It was a surprise win after every attempt was made by Israeli lobbyists to quash its making and after distributers in the US refused to come forward to show it in their movie halls.
A Palestinian journalist from the West Bank and an Israeli Jewish investigative journalist from Jerusalem joined hands to describe the searing reality of life under the occupation of a people whose lives too were once cruelly disrupted by a racist state. The documentary took me to my days at JNU with Palestinian students on Delhi’s streets protesting against their betrayal by fellow Arab states who continue to collude with Zionism paying the Palestinians a grudging lip service.
Though Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and No Other Land have different themes and unfold on different continents, the theft of resources of the occupied lands and the dispossession of its people is a common thread that connects them irrevocably.
No Other Land’s straightforward message of love, inclusiveness, and tolerance underscored a team that worked like a bridge of friendship between two hostile camps. It haunts the conscience with its simplicity. It focuses on the life of an ordinary Palestinian family over a five-year period in the village of Masafar Yatta in the West Bank. The sensitive portrayal of the family’s struggle for survival reveals an amazing dignity amid home demolitions by Israeli troops.
Fierce attacks by Jewish settlers backed by the troops set the tone for the ongoing tragedy of epic proportions in Gaza. Homes, health facilities, schools destroyed or severely damaged, more than 48,405 Palestinians killed since October 2023 according to the UN, including at least 18,000 children, 111,835 injured, and 1.9 million displaced – more than 90% of the population – many of them multiple times over. No Other Land gives these numbers a face and a voice, a voice that tells enough is enough to Israel’s allies, chiefly the US, that has been supporting the genocidal war with weapons and finance. The US is fiercely polarised on the issue.
Talking about the film after winning the Oscar its Palestinian director Basel Adra said, “No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice, and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” His joint winner, Yuval Abraham who stood beside him said he saw his brother when he looked at Basel. Yuval called for “a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people.”
A scene from the trailer of No Other Land. Photo: Videograb from YouTube
With this one line the two young directors took us back to the basics. They were telling the world that their lives were intertwined and the only way for the Israelis to feel safe was to give Palestinians their freedom and make them feel safe in their homeland.
“It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way,” said Yuval. This moving plea won both a thunderous applause and many who saw the clip on their TVs could feel their eyes well up.
There are some powerful films that have been made before about the oppression of the Palestinians and their phoenix-like resilience that inspires awe. But No Other Land just needed to be made for the unique value it brings to the table – the blending of the Palestinian and Israeli need to live peacefully on ‘no other land’ but theirs. The natural ease of this positive, conciliatory approach and its forthright message sink home with unquestionable credibility – that there is no other land acceptable to Palestinians than their battered and brutally occupied homeland, and that there is no other way for Palestinians and Israelis than to live alongside with mutual respect and dignity. There will be critics of this approach on both sides, and it has been reported that the young filmmakers have received death threats. Beyond the expected Israeli rage, the documentary according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, has sparked a debate among a section of the Palestinian public opinion whether cooperation between Palestinians and liberal left-wing Israelis can be considered normalisation of the occupier or an effective way of ending the occupation.
Also read: Prominent Indian Film Festivals Cancelled ‘No Other Land’ Screenings. Now it Has Won an Oscar.
The other film, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, portrays entirely through archival footage the sinister events that preceded the arrest and horrific killing of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. Lumumba, the first independent prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was the soul of the Pan-African and anti-colonial movements along with visionary leaders like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal.
A still from ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’.
Lumumba was tortured and killed shortly after he formed the first government of independent Congo. His assassination was followed by a military coup supported by Belgium, the United States and powerful mining interests. Why was Lumumba’s assassination such a tragic turning point for the African continent? In an interview to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, the documentary’s Belgian director Johan Grimonprez explained how Lumumba’s assassination was “the ground zero of how the West was about to deal with the riches of the African continent.”
The film brings new evidence that throws light on the linkages between the insidious events leading to Lumumba’s assassination and the situation that DR Congo finds itself in today. The objective of the assassination was not to eliminate him alone, but to crush the perceived threat of African identity that Lumumba’s politics stood for in the context of the Cold War. Lumumba’s killing was a calculated death blow to the emerging nation state of DRC and its nascent institutions, thus clearing the way for neo-colonial exploitation of the country and its tremendous wealth of natural resources.
The role of Western countries in creating the conditions that have allowed DRC to hurtle from conflict to conflict has been completely ignored by the media and the global political discourse on Africa. Conflicts raging between numerous armed groups are inevitably backed by mighty mining interests. Ethnic rivalries and incursions by neighbouring countries are used as cat’s paw by imperialist interests to continue plundering Congo’s rich natural resources.
DRC’s blessing of huge reserves of minerals that are essential for modern technology has become its curse too. It produces well over half of the world’s cobalt and contains 60 to 80% of the world’s coltan and other rare earth minerals. From smartphones to electric vehicles, today’s society is powered by Congolese minerals. According to the World Bank, DRC’s strong mining sector which grew by 18.2% contributed over 70% to a robust GDP growth of 8.4%. But this economic growth has completely escaped most people in DRC who continue to live a life of penury and deprivation. The World Bank has ranked DRC among the five poorest nations in the world. Close to 75% of its population lived on less than $2.15 a day in 2024. Every sixth person out of all the people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, lives in DRC.
DRC. Photo: David Axe/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
The UN and several development and humanitarian organisations have been working in DRC for decades. It is evident that the Congolese health professionals and community workers are technically sound, resilient, and ready to challenge Murphy’s Law with innovative solutions. But they have little or no infrastructure to support them, particularly in the villages, no resources to work with, and no one to appreciate their hard work. The myth of Sisyphus is being played out in a country that is endowed with a treasure trove natural resources and enviable biodiversity. As soon as there is a positive health or nutrition or elementary education indicator to report, there is a new outbreak of an epidemic, or an armed conflict, usually in the beleaguered area of eastern Congo, explodes…
This indeed was the case in the beginning of this year when one of the deadliest conflicts erupted in and around Goma on the eastern border of the country with Rwanda. The devastating conflict came on tiptoe when the world was obsessed with the inauguration of Donald Trump and the unpredictability of his policies. March 23 an armed militant group believed to be backed by Rwanda started seizing major cities, thus throwing DRC into one of its bloodiest conflicts. The DRC’s prime minister, Judith Suminwa Tuluka announced on February 24 that over 7000 people had died and 450,0000 rendered homeless. Over the past three decades DR Congo has been shattered by war, and according to most estimates over 6 million people have died; millions more have been displaced in the same period.
In his article of February 19, 2025 in the New York Times titled, ‘Congo is Bleeding. Where is the Outrage?’ Denis Mukwege, the founder of Bukavu’s (east DRC) Panzi Hospital and Foundation and a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate writes:
“In Gaza, images of devastation have dominated headlines for more than a year. In Ukraine, nations have rallied to defend sovereignty against aggression, deploying diplomatic interventions, sending military aid and enacting sweeping sanctions with urgency. Yet the war unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains an afterthought. A bloody conflict is met with condemnations but no meaningful action. This stark contrast is not just neglect; it is selective justice.”
There is no bloody war that is more ‘deserving of attention’ than another, but Dr. Mukwege has a point.
This is not the first time the world has looked the other way.
The UN has documented these conflicts and their impact. But their resolution demands a political response that does not use instigated militia wars as an alibi for inaction. DRC is not a ‘failed state,’ it has been made to fail. Soundtrack of a Coup d’Etat is a bold attempt to call out the racism, the pillage of African resources and the epistemic violence of erasure of the African identity and nationhood.
It is reassuring therefore that films like No Other Land and Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat could make the mark and bring the injustices of the occupation of Palestine and the role of neocolonial powers in the continued exploitation of DR Congo to a wider international audience.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been notorious for ruining the careers of scriptwriters, filmmakers and actors for suspected or acknowledged communist links. In the MacArthur period ‘blacklists’ were made, and film professionals were deprived of jobs, harassed or put in jail, most notably screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. The Academy also came under serious flak in 2015-2016 for nominating and selecting white, cisgender, heterosexual actors, actresses and directors for the Oscars. The initiative shown by the Academy this year to be diverse and inclusive needs to be acknowledged and encouraged.
