THE LIFE of retired premiership defender Heritier Lumumba will be explored in a documentary to be released next year.

Lumumba, 30, hung up the boots earlier this week after dealing with repeated concussions.

The documentary, Becoming Lumumba, will detail the rise of a person who grew up in Brazil and went on to win a premiership with Collingwood in 2010. He was named in the All Australian team that year.

Lumumba was previously known as Harry O'Brien before reverting to his birth name in 2013.

"A black man in a white world – Harry searches for his own identity in a country and culture that he feels never really accepts him," a blurb for the documentary said.

It was directed by Jeff Daniels and produced by Tom Zubrycki.

Melbourne released Lumumba for an undisclosed settlement earlier this week. He had been contracted until the end of 2017, with a trigger for an extra year on top of that.

Lumumba came to the Demons at the end of 2014 as part of a three-way trade that saw Mitch Clark go to Geelong and Travis Varcoe become a Magpie.