“The film should continue with you, otherwise I’m just preaching”: Raoul Peck on his documentary Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Haitian director Raoul Peck has long been investigating how unjust social and political power structures have impacted on communities and individuals, from assassinated African leader Patrice Lumumba to his intimate first-person portrait of African-American writer James Baldwin (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) in 2017’s Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro.  

His upcoming film, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found explores the life and work of the groundbreaking South African photographer, whose 1967 book House of Bondage is widely credited as exposing the horrors of apartheid to the wider world. Cole’s subsequent exile, frustrated career and tragic early death in 1990, aged just 49, are creatively expressed through many of his own images, with actor LaKeith Stanfield voicing a blend of Cole’s own words and Peck’s reinterpretation, the director himself all-too familiar with a life in exile. 

I guess many people are going to discover Ernest Cole through your film. Where did you discover him?  

I probably saw his pictures before I knew who he was because a few of his photos were already iconic in the anti-apartheid fight. I was involved in that in Berlin as a young man, but at the time, we didn’t look to photography as an art like we do today. It was about, is it impactful? Is it efficient? If yes, then we use it. Ernest Cole himself felt that some of his work was used by the ANC as propaganda. So there was some friction.  

So it wasn’t until very late, like seven years ago, around that I was approached by [Ernest Cole’s] estate. At the time, I was still working on Exterminate All The Brutes [2021] so right then, it wasn’t possible. But all my life I’ve been helping build archives, so after I finished the other projects, I said, okay, let’s look into it in a deeper way. And I started reading his diary, going through the photos. I went through thousands and thousands of photos, negatives, contact sheets, and started analysing for myself: how did he photograph? What were his choices? What was his technique? 

So, do you feel the film looks to readdress that balance towards the actual art of the photography? 

It’s a dilemma, of course, it’s never clear cut. Today it’s easier to say: “I’m an artist, and so accept me as that.” For Ernest, it was always both, but he wanted also to have the freedom to just be a photographer, not a Black photographer, not an anti-apartheid photographer, and that part was never allowed to him. That’s where the problem starts. 

There’s a quote from him that you put at the beginning of the movie: “The total man does not live one experience.”  

It’s like you would tell a painter, “Okay, we love your painting, but you can only use blue and dark blue, no other colours.” I don’t think you would accept that. So, if Cartier Bresson is the photographer that inspires you, you start working like that to document the human condition. But then when you go out from your prison into the free world, you realise that you cannot just photograph the human condition. You should photograph the South African human condition. And if you come to the US, you should photograph Black misery in the streets.   

The voiceover is a fascinating blend of Cole’s own words, and you bringing your own interpretation. How that process was for you, trying to find or connect with his voice? 

First of all, you have to be humble, and try to listen to him, to understand every part of who he is, what he did. And also, as an artist yourself to say, I’m interested for my work to survive me. And then the other important part is that I lived that time. I went through that evolution myself, and I saw how your work as a Black photographer or Black filmmaker is considered by the dominant forces, or the dominant curators, both in cinema and photos, so I could relate exactly about that. And the third part that helped me, you know, play that double personality is the fact that I know what exile is. I knew it from [living in] France. Exile is being in your mind, every day, every minute, with your people. What is happening at home? I was in that position hearing that family was arrested, so and so was killed, or tortured. You know, dictatorship in Haiti was 25 years. So it was not new to me, that’s why I was able to catch those moments.  

It’s fascinating to hear you talk about your own experiences, because the immediate connection I made was with James Baldwin: another creative Black man who does incredible work, but is then exiled. Although I guess Baldwin had more success in grounding himself in his new place than Ernest Cole…  

But Baldwin still had to struggle with the fact that, even in France, he learned very quickly that, “Oh, they opened their doors because I am American, but not because I’m Black”, right? And then he starts seeing how they were treating the Arabs and he solidarised with the Arabs because he knew what it meant. Being away gives you an additional compass, an additional analysing tool to understand your life at home. So, both of them, you can say that the distance gave them a sharper view of those societies.  

I was intrigued by the other elements you brought in, like, the 1969 film about Cole, and I was very touched by his optimism that apartheid is going to end, when at the time it seemed a distant hope. 

I don’t think it’s optimism at the time. Don’t forget, especially for the Left, it was “victoria siempre”. We knew the good cause [would] win. You had to believe in that at the time, there was no other belief. It was like the Vietnamese against the Americans: we will win the fight. And indeed, because dictatorships, at one point, always crumbled. Even though there is a lot of [utopian thinking] in it, because you can see where we are today. Even in the west today, to have Trump, to have Gaza, to have Ukraine… the work is never finished.  

There’s a real poignancy in fact that Cole died in 1990 and that’s basically the time that tangible changes started to happen in South Africa. And then he wasn’t there to see it… 

He saw the liberation of Mandela. That was almost the same week he died, and he had asked for a TV in his room, so he saw Mandela come out of prison before he died. That’s so that’s why I wanted this happier ending for the film. Because again, don’t forget, it’s not just an individual fight, it’s a collective fight, and the collective won. So, for me, I had to catch this positive liberation movement, and he was part of it, because his work was part of it. 

I want to talk about the voiceover. You used Samuel L. Jackson to voice James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro and LaKeith Stanfield as Cole here, and perhaps because you make fiction films as well as documentaries, they don’t feel like typical documentary narration.  

Exactly. I always correct journalists when they say narration. I cast an actor to be the character because my documentary should be about a story you’re telling. Documentary is not a news item. Documentaries are telling a story, which means with characters with emotions, with contradictions, with conflict, and then you have an actor, because the choice, don’t forget the starting choice: Baldwin is telling his story himself; Cole is telling his story himself. You need to be in him.  

So how you work with the actor to create the effect you want? 

I just tell them, “You have to be.” That’s it. A great actor knows, especially an actor that has made theatre, because once you’re on the stage, you’re alone, the director is not there. So, you have to own every word. At the end of recording, LaKeith was crying – when you hear his voice break, that was not false. He was in that emotional place. Sam Jackson cried during the recording, because he was totally in it. You are the character. 

There are so many obvious parallels to what’s going on in the world today, with similar sorts of authoritarian regimes and injustice. But you don’t push them too much in the movie, and that’s a very conscious choice. 

I try to have films where the audience is making the film with me, they are participating. Otherwise, you just fabricate a consumed product, and people just absorb it and nothing happens afterwards. For me, it’s a voyage. The film is the beginning of the experience, and it should continue with you, it should produce further discussion, whether in your head or with others. So that space is important. It’s like in photography, to find the right distance as well. Otherwise, I’m just preaching to you. 

► Ernest Cole: Lost and Found will arrive in UK cinemas 7 March 2025.