Film Forum

U.S./France/Belgium/Switzerland, 2016
Directed by Raoul Peck
Based on the Writings of James Baldwin
Approx. 93 min. DCP.

“A thrilling documentary about James Baldwin by the Haitian director Raoul Peck… At the heart of I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is Baldwin’s never-completed project about the civil rights movement and three of his assassinated friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr… The documentary resurrects Baldwin’s unrealized venture, primarily using his own words — Samuel L. Jackson provides the moving, modulated voice-over — to create a portrait of one man’s confrontation with a country that, murder by murder, as he once put it, ‘devastated my universe.’ Brilliantly edited, (the film) moves across time and space seamlessly — insistently — sliding from the historical civil rights movement to more recent events, including Ferguson. Mr. Peck draws on a wealth of found and original visual material, including appalling excerpts from the F.B.I.’s files on Baldwin… Mr. Peck is a consummate filmmaker who deserves a larger American audience. He’ll get it when I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO opens.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

A MAGNOLIA PICTURES RELEASE

Reviews

“Superb. Masterfully addressing the American racial divide, past and present, director Raoul Peck’s six-years-in-the-making documentary... is a galvanizing, ominous film, thrumming with a sense of history repeating itself… Peck does a magnificent job of honoring Baldwin’s concept... There hasn’t been as concise, targeted and rigorous an examination of the problems of being black, smart and outspoken, until now.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out (New York)

“A transcendent documentary. A meditation on the prophetic brilliance and the very being of James Baldwin.”
– Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“A fascinating and gorgeous and very powerful film.”
– Bob Mondello, NPR

“One of the best movies about the civil rights era ever made.”
– Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian