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I Am Not Your Negro

Panorama Dokumente 2017
© Dan Budnik
In June 1979 renowned US writer James Baldwin began work on his last, unfinished text ‘Remember this House’. His personal memories of his three murdered civil rights friends Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King and his reflections on his own painful experiences as a black American serve to re-write American history.
Raoul Peck has turned these thirty hitherto unpublished pages into a powerful collage of archive photographs, excerpts from films and newsreel footage: the boycotts and the resistance against racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, the invisibility of black Americans in Hollywood’s legendary works, the Afro-American protests against white police brutality that continue to take place even today, Baldwin’s complex relationship with the Black Power Movement and one FBI report’s paranoid view of Baldwin’s homosexuality. A trenchant and disturbing essay about the reality of the lives of African Americans – lives that are still largely ignored by America’s mainstream. Samuel L Jackson’s voice lends Baldwin’s poetic, meditative language suitable expression.
by Raoul Peck (Director, Screenplay), James Baldwin (Screenplay)
with James Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Lorraine Hansberry France / USA / Belgium / Switzerland 2016 English 93' Black/White & Colour Documentary form

With

  • James Baldwin
  • Samuel L. Jackson (Narrator)
  • Malcolm X
  • Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Medgar Evers
  • Lorraine Hansberry

Crew

Director Raoul Peck
Screenplay James Baldwin, Raoul Peck
Cinematography Henry Adebonojo, Bill Ross, Turner Ross
Editing Alexandra Strauss
Music Alexei Aigui
Sound Design David Gillain
Sound Valérie Le Docte
Archival Research Marie-Hélène Barbéris
Producers Rémi Grellety, Raoul Peck, Hébert Peck
Co-Producers Patrick Quinet, Joëllle Bertossa

World Sales

Wide House

Paris, France

Produced by

Velvet Film

Paris, France

Photos

In Focus

Geneviève Dulude-de Celles

© Camille Gladu-Drouin

After completing a master’s degree centred on language and poetry in cinema, the Montreal-based filmmaker made La coupe which won Best International Short Film at Sundance. She went on to direct two feature-length documentaries, Bienvenue à F.L. and Les jours. Her debut fiction feature film, Une colonie, was selected for the Berlinale Generation section where it won the Crystal Bear for Best Film before going on to secure Best Motion Picture at the Canadian Screen Awards. Nina Roza is her second fiction feature film.

Filmography (Filmography)

2010 Chers Amis (Dear Friends); short film 2014 La coupe (The Cut); short film 2015 Bienvenue à F.L. (Welcome to F.L.) 2018 Une colonie (A Colony); Berlinale 2019 2023 Les jours (Days); documentary 2026 Nina Roza

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2026