Patrice Lumumba’s two-month reign as prime minister of the newly independent Congo in 1960 was electrifying but doomed before it started. Hamstrung by the Belgian colonial government, betrayed by his army, and murdered by a political rival (with the more-than-tacit approval of the U.S., who labeled him a Communist), Lumumba, portrayed by Ebouaney with a restless intensity, is the political martyr you’ve never heard of. The film, a ferocious barrage of political education that doesn’t condescend to the uninformed, will have viewers not only wishing for a geopolitical primer, but actually wanting to read it.
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