This outstanding and informative film presents Baldwin’s musings alongside sobering imagery of both the turbulent history of the era and parallel occurrences of modern racial unrest that echo the same violence, inequality, anger, and sorrow.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 4, 2023

I Am Not Your Negro avoids gratuitous lamentation both in form and substance. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 16, 2023

Though it may limit discussion of Baldwin’s sexuality to a singular passing reference, the 2017 documentary still offers an essential and compelling peek into one of our nation’s most impressive minds.

| Oct 3, 2022

...as bold and forthcoming as its uncompromising title.

| Original Score: FIVE STARS | Mar 29, 2022

I Am Not Your Negro, an essential documentary about writer/theorist/cultural and film critic/icon James Baldwin, is well worth anyone's time, but especially so during the chaos of The Now.

| Sep 10, 2021

A startlingly original and moving portrait...

| Jun 28, 2021

It's an extraordinary visual essay, distilling decades - centuries, in fact - of black history into 95 minutes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 4, 2021

With no talking heads Peck relies on news footage, movie clips and archival talk show tape, intercutting them with the fluidity of jazz. Posters and graphics punctuate the narration, subliminally driving home Baldwin's points.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 4, 2021

It's an undeniably excellent film and a much-needed tribute to both Baldwin and the racial politics of the 1960s and ʼ70s... The only shortcoming of Peck's film is its almost complete erasure of Baldwin's homosexuality.

| Feb 18, 2021

Its themes are as important today as they were yesterday, especially in the current climate of radical right-wing ideas and racist sentiment sweeping Trump's America.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 31, 2020

An astonishment.

| Jun 29, 2020

Raoul Peck's visual telling of writer James Baldwin's unfinished final novel "Remember This House" articulates another story of race in modern America.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 11, 2020

Simply put, I Am Not Your Negro is essential viewing for all Americans.

| May 1, 2020

Baldwin's fury and his despair come through in vivid fashion, making this film not just an important social document, but an essential work of art.

| Mar 23, 2020

[It] isn't just a biography of an intellectual or a history lesson about resistance towards white supremacy. The film is all of that, and more, a clear-eyed examination of the ugly wound in the land of the free.

| Feb 19, 2020

I Am Not Your Negro is montage and meditation, a dialogue between the archive and the present, a road movie without the road.

| Feb 5, 2020

Thirty years after his death, Baldwin's words and deeds still speak to an America that needs to listen.

| Jan 15, 2020

Director Raoul Peck weaves a breathtaking cinematic tapestry. Drawing from old interviews and college lectures, popular movies, blues music, and Baldwin's poetic words, Peck takes us on a tour of history.

| Sep 27, 2019

It's been 30 years since Baldwin died, but his words still ring true in this powerful film for a new generation.

| Sep 5, 2019

It is broad, complex, assertive and absolutely essential.

| Aug 14, 2019