‘Soundtrack To A Coup D’Etat’ Director Johan Grimonprez Named Guest Of Honor At 2024 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

deadline.com:

Belgian artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, whose latest documentary Soundtrack To a Coup D’Etat is expected to be an Oscar contender, has been named Guest of Honor at the upcoming International Documentary Festival Amsterdam.

The honor recognizes a distinguished career that includes Blue Orchids, and his debut feature film, the 1997 documentary dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y.

IDFA, which runs from Nov. 14-24, will be highlighting the filmmaker’s “uncompromising approach to challenging narratives and reinterpreting historical events through a critical, contemporary lens,” the festival said in a statement. “Grimonprez first gained international acclaim with his 1997 film dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which examined the history of airplane hijackings and the media’s role in shaping public perception,” IDFA noted in a release. “His most recent award-winning film, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, unravels the decolonization of Congo, using jazz as a smokescreen and means of protest in the examination of the international context behind the 1961 murder of Congo’s prime minister, Patrice Lumumba.

Other films screening will be Double Take (2009), Shadow World (2016), Blue Orchids (2017) and more. With this retrospective, IDFA invites audiences to discover and reflect on Grimonprez’s singular exploration into the development of present-day media, from how world crises are represented to our own relationships to these platforms and technologies.” Grimonprez will take part in an extensive discussion of his work, the centerpiece Talk of this year’s IDFA.