36 Facts About Raoul Peck

Raoul Peck is known for using historical, political, and personal characters to tackle and recount societal issues and historical events.

Raoul Peck is the founder of Velvet Film, a film production company in Paris, New York, and Port-au-Prince.

Raoul Peck founded "El Dorado Forum" in 1995, a center that supports the creativity and enrichment of artists.

Raoul Peck attended schools in Kinshasa, DRC, in Brooklyn, New York and in Orleans, France where he earned a baccalaureat, before studying industrial engineering and economics at Berlin's Humboldt University.

Raoul Peck always had artistic dreams, but these were frowned upon in Haiti, his home country.

Raoul Peck then decided to wait until after completing his studies at Humboldt University to return to Haiti and pursue his cinematic career.

Raoul Peck served as Minister of Culture in the Haitian government of Prime Minister Rosny Smarth, ultimately resigning his post along with the Prime Minister and five other ministers in protest of Presidents Preval and Aristide.

Raoul Peck initially developed short experimental works and socio-political documentaries, before moving on to feature films.

Raoul Peck directed Leugt, another short, whose topic was Ronald Reagan's visit to Berlin and the violent protests that arose.

In 1986 Raoul Peck created the film production company Velvet Film in Germany, which then produced or co-produced all his documentaries, feature films and TV dramas.

However, Raoul Peck made a counteroffer and attempted to launch a fiction project around Patrice Lumumba for the first time.

Two years later in 1993, Raoul Peck returned to a more Haitian- specific theme with a feature, The Man by The Shore, a fictional story about the beginning of "Duvalierism" and the implementation of the process of terror through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl.

One year after The Man by The Shore premiered, Raoul Peck directed the documentary Desounen, Dialogue with Death.

That same year, Raoul Peck wrote and directed Haiti, Silence of the Dogs, which documented the confrontation between the democratically-elected Haitian President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his prime minister, Robert Malval.

Raoul Peck received the Nestor Almendros Prize of Human Rights Watch in 1994.

In 1998, Raoul Peck was commissioned by the museum curator, Catherine David, to create a video essay about documenta X, a contemporary art exhibition, in Kassel, Germany: Chere Catherine.

Later that year, Raoul Peck directed It's Not About Love, commissioned by the French television channel Arte.

Raoul Peck received international attention for Lumumba, his 2000 fiction feature film about Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the period around the independence of the Belgian Congo in June 1960.

Five years later, Raoul Peck was elected Chairman of La Femis, the French state film school, on 10 January 2010.

Raoul Peck continued his journey in the film industry when he was named as a member of the Jury for the Main Competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2023, Raoul Peck directed and produced Silver Dollar Road for Amazon Studios, revolving around a family's land who becomes subject to harassment by land developers.

In 2024, Raoul Peck directed and produced Ernest Cole: Lost and Found revolving around photographer Ernest Cole which had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in May 2024.

Raoul Peck is currently in production on Orwell, a documentary revolving around George Orwell for Neon, and a documentary revolving around the Assassination of Jovenel Moise.

Raoul Peck decided to go back and take on the character of Patrice Lumumba with a feature film that was accessible to the public.

Raoul Peck used real images to unveil the "unwritten controversial history" of how Lumumba led the Republic of Congo towards its independence in 1960.

Raoul Peck posed a certain number of generally "unacceptable" conditions in the United States.

In 2001, while in Rwanda, Raoul Peck became overwhelmed and convinced of the need to react to the Rwandan Genocide.

Raoul Peck then immersed himself in the story of Rwanda and studied multiple reports, books, documents and collected various testimonies to try to understand the Rwanda of today.

The Rwandan people were the first to see the film because of the moral agreement that Raoul Peck concluded with them.

In 2016, Raoul Peck directed a documentary film, I Am Not Your Negro, which follows author James Baldwin, as he used his "unfinished novel, Remember This House" to highlight the history of society's poor treatment of African Americans in the United States.

Raoul Peck took about ten years to attain the rights to the film.

Since the beginning of his career, Raoul Peck's filmography reflects an ensemble of films with a particular writing style.

Raoul Peck's work considers his fragmented biography.

Raoul Peck has often traveled abroad; he said that when he goes abroad he can find a sort of peace.

Nonetheless, Raoul Peck found a match in screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer when writing The Young Karl Marx.

Raoul Peck had the opportunity to renew this type of collaboration in the United States with writer Russel Banks.