8.8 /10 1 Votes
98% Rotten Tomatoes Directed by Raoul Peck Music by Alexei Aigui Director Raoul Peck Screenplay James Baldwin, Raoul Peck | 7.1/10 IMDb 96% Metacritic Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson Initial release 3 February 2017 (USA) Cast Samuel L. Jackson | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Produced by Rémi Grellety
Hébert Peck
Raoul Peck Written by James Baldwin
Raoul Peck Based on Remember This House by James Baldwin Nominations Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Producers Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety, Hébert Peck Similar Murder in Pacot, Lumumba, Fatal Assistance, Moloch Tropical, Cameraperson Profiles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I am not your negro official trailer 1 2016 james baldwin documentary
I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House. Narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson, the film explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin's reminiscences of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards.
Contents
I am not your negro official teaser trailer 2016 documentary
Release
The film premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award in the documentary category. Shortly after, Magnolia Pictures and Amazon Studios acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released for an Oscar-qualifying run on December 9, 2016, before re-opening on February 3, 2017.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 98% based on 107 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "I Am Not Your Negro offers an incendiary snapshot of James Baldwin's crucial observations on American race relations -- and a sobering reminder of how far we've yet to go." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 96 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Joe Morgenstern from the Wall Street Journal says: “the film is unsparing as history and enthralling as biography. It’s an evocation of a passionate soul in a tumultuous era, a film that uses Baldwin’s spoken words, and his notes for an unfinished book, to illuminate the struggle for civil rights.”
Negative reviews included Julius Kassendorf, who wrote, “The closest Peck comes to acknowledging James Baldwin homosexuality is in a block of text about Peck’s FBI CoIntel files, which stated “he may be a homosexual.”[...] Raoul Peck all but erases the homosexuality not just through judicious choices of Baldwin's works or statements, but also his choice of narrator. Samuel L. Jackson's deep croaking baritone is that of a dead serious heterosexual.”
Awards and nominations
As of January 2017, I Am Not Your Negro has won 11 international awards, including the following: