‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ Director: Our World’s Problems Go Well Beyond Trump and the Republicans

The Oscar-nominated doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is layered and unconventional, as sprawling in its critique as it is unusual in its delivery.

The same, it turns out, can be said of its director.

Johan Grimonprez’s essayistic film focuses on the colonial powers’ suppression of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — while also telling a story of jazz, Nikita Khrushchev, Black Power and the fractious United Nations.

Grimonprez is his own eclectic mix. A cultural theorist preoccupied with mass media and fear; a fast-talking professorial Belgian who never met a historical rabbit hole he didn’t like; and an impassioned anti-corporatist now living a utopian life on the small Greek island of Andros.

So what would happen when THR would hop on a Zoom to ask Grimonprez about his film? A colorful, provocative and digressive set of responses about the ways the world is existentially screwed. 

You grew up in Bruges during the 1960s not long after Lumumba’s assassination. Were you aware of your country’s colonial actions?

It’s amazing how little we knew about what was going on or thought about it. It was something happening “out there.” There were these trading cards — you know, like football cards? — with Leopold II and other Belgians in the Congo. There was a teacher who came in to our school with a gold tooth from Lumumba. Right from his mouth! He got it when [Katangan forces who killed Lumumba] were burning his corpse in acid so they took his gold teeth as a trophy, and this teacher got one. 

What did you come to think in making the film about the roots of colonialism?

To me, the film was a learning curve. In my previous movie, Shadow World, about the international arms trade, [author] Chris Hedges describes “the corporatocracy” and how it’s used to fight wars. You have three defense lobbyists for every two politicians in Washington. The corporatocracy is a system. It’s a structural problem. You have an extraction economy — how can I use my forces to get as much out of you as possible? — and that leads to the predicament we’re now in.

I feel like we’re seeing that with Greenland — Donald Trump wants to use American power to control a country’s resources, and its 57,000 people are no more than a nuisance to deal with.

But again, it’s a system. We can talk about Biden and Trump, but it’s a structural problem. [The Intercept founder] Jeremy Scahill talks about “Murder Inc.” — how the Obama administration would decide on Tuesday who to kill with a drone. If you’re going to pour money into the defense industry, you’re going to end up with war. The extraction economy — you objectify. Not just people. Nature, too. We have to look a lot deeper if we want to change this. We’re all connected to it.

What changes would you recommend?

Gardening and growing your own food. Three conglomerates own 60 to 70 percent of the seeds in the world. Food becomes corporate intellectual property. That’s the wrong connection. There’s a community near here on the island of Sifnos: They got together to control their own water. They advance the idea of the commons. Their survival and prosperity are not tied to corporations. 

You recontextualize Nikita Khrushchev’s famous shoe-banging incident at the U.N. not as we will bury “you,” the U.S., but the colonial system. Have we gotten this wrong all along? 

It was absolutely mistranslated. He was saying colonialism. Khrushchev could have been an ally — he convinced China to give up its nuclear program. But that’s not how the system wanted us to see him. 

This story first appeared in a February stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.