Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Following the success of his Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro which was based on the writings of James Baldwin, Raoul Peck turns his lens to another visionary: Ernest Cole, the trailblazing Black South African photographer whose searing images exposed apartheid’s brutality to the world. Cole’s life would take a tragic turn; exiled, stateless, and struggling in America, he died in obscurity just as apartheid began to crumble.
With Cole’s writings hauntingly voiced by LaKeith Stanfield, Peck crafts a poignant portrait of an artist torn between his craft, his homeland, and the crushing weight of expectation.

A baffling footnote marks the end of Cole’s life and the film: in the midst of poverty, a mysterious benefactor in Sweden secretly preserved his lost archive, saving his legacy but deepening his despair. A gripping meditation on art, exile, and identity, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found leaves the question hanging: Was Cole’s work rescued, or was he robbed of his final connection to it? (BH)