Lumumba is a 2000 biographical film directed by Raoul Peck. A co-production of France, Germany, Belgium, and Haiti filmed in French, the film depicts the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba, and is set in the months before and after Congo-Léopoldville achieved independence from Belgium in June 1960. Political unrest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the time of filming caused the film to be shot in Zimbabwe and Beira, Mozambique. The film received positive reviews from critics, and won awards from the American Black Film Festival, the Political Film Society, and the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou. Plot The film begins with a montage of Lumumba and his compatriots Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo being driven to their executions, cutting to their bodies being exhumed, dismembered, and burned on the orders of Mobutu Sese Seko. Lumumba narrates his final letter to his wife in these introductory scenes. The film then jumps back to the late 1950s as Lumumba has a debate with Moïse Tshombe and Godefroid Munongo, rival politicians from the ethnically-nationalist pro-Western CONAKAT party. Lumumba expresses his Pan-Africanist ideals, expressed at a recent summit in Accra, Ghana, which infuriate Tshombe and Munongo. Following the debate, the film cuts back to Lumumba receiving his job as a beer salesman, hired because of his public speaking ability by the Polar beer company, which the locals distrust. While using his beer sales to promote his political ideas in Leopoldville, Lumumba meets Joseph Mobutu for the first time. After hearing that Baudouin of Belgium has become more favorable to independence, the street meeting is broken up by Force Publique soldiers, who arrest and imprison Lumumba where he is beaten by the Belgian guards before being freed and sent to Brussels to negotiate Congolese independence. While in Brussels, Lumumba first meets Joseph Kasa-Vubu (spelled Kasavubu in the film), a fellow independence-minded politician from the rival ABAKO party, who wishes to better compromise with the Belgians, who insist that their colonial rule is all that prevents tribal warfare from occurring. Upset that the Belgians do not recognize the legitimacy of the Mouvement National Congolais given their success in the elections, Lumumba backs Kasavubu for president, who in turn appoints Lumumba as prime minister. On the night of the coalition's formation, Lumumba is threatened by Tshombe and Munongo, who were not given any leadership positions in the new government. At the