I Am Not Your Negro

Raoul Peck's documentary draws on an unfinished manuscript by the writer James Baldwin, in which Baldwin reflected on race in modern America through his memories of three friends and civil rights figures: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom were assassinated. Completed by the director, the film lets Baldwin's own words, drawn from that manuscript and from his public appearances, carry the argument, with Samuel L. Jackson reading the narration in the English version and JoeyStarr providing the French voice-over. Archive footage of Baldwin and of the three men, along with clips from films that shaped him, accompany the text. The result looks at the racial divide between white and Black Americans as both a historical burden and a continuing concern, and the French-language version extends that reflection to French society as well. The film is a Belgian, American and French co-production.

Peck placed the documentary in the same year as his fiction feature The Young Karl Marx, arriving nearly two decades after It's Not About Love; his later work includes Ernest Cole: Lost and Found and Orwell: 2+2=5. Produced on a budget of about one million dollars, it returned roughly seven million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.9 out of 10 from 25,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.7 from 536 votes; a critics' rating of 8.9 from 210 reviews is markedly higher than both audience scores.