When We Were Kings

When We Were Kings is a documentary about the 1974 heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, staged in Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali, at thirty-two, was widely considered to be past his best, while the younger Foreman arrived as champion. The promoter Don King proposed the bout, and the backing of Zaire's ruler Mobutu Sese Seko made it possible. A music festival featuring African American performers, among them James Brown and B.B. King, was part of the surrounding events.

Leon Gast directed and wrote the film, and produced it with Taylor Hackford. Alongside footage shot in Zaire in 1974, the documentary includes later interviews, with the boxers, Don King, the musicians and Spike Lee among the credited participants. The film examines the fight's significance for Ali's career and for the African country that hosted it, as well as the symbolic weight Ali carried.

Released in 1996, the film runs eighty-nine minutes and is a co-production between the United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It took about three million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.9 from roughly twenty thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.6 from about 262 votes, figures that point to a widely seen documentary with a consistently favourable audience response. It was the first of the two features Gast directed, ahead of Manny.