Against the backdrop of the Congolese independence, the Cold War, and the civil rights struggles, Johan Grimonprez tells the story of an unexpected instrument of American diplomacy: jazz. Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and other figures were sent to the four corners of the world as cultural ambassadors, while, in the shadows, the CIA orchestrated maneuvers to counter the union of young African nations and hinder the idea of a United States of Africa championed by Patrice Lumumba. 

 
Through a rich montage of archives, the film reveals how the UN, far from embodying peace, became an agent of destabilization after the entry of sixteen African countries. At the heart of this narrative, a secret agreement between Churchill, Eisenhower, and Belgium emerges around Congolese uranium, a central stake in American nuclear deterrence which sealed Lumumba's fate, assassinated a few months after the independence was established.

 
Grimonprez gives voice to multiple witnesses – Andrée Blouin, activist and pioneer of women's emancipation, the Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Belgian Congolese writer In Koli Jean Bofane, or even Khrushchev – to recompose a sensitive cartography where music, politics, and memory intertwine.