Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Ernest Cole, South African photographer, was the first to expose the horrors of Apartheid to the world through his acclaimed book 'House of Bondage' (1967), which he published at the age of 27. His work, a visual testimony of racial brutality in South Africa, earned him the condemnation of the Apartheid regime and, eventually, exile.

Cole moved to New York and Europe, but never found a true home, facing the constant struggle for his identity and his voice as an artist. In his work, anger and despair are combined over a Western world that remained silent or complicit in the atrocities committed in South Africa, that had a big impact in the future generations of the people that lied that experience.

Director Raoul Peck tells his story, focusing not only on Cole's struggle to document the reality of Apartheid but also on the personal difficulties he faced, from exile to the fight for recognition. In 2017, an unexpected discovery turned his legacy around: 60,000 negatives of his work were found in a Swedish bank vault, revealing an unprecedented amount of visual material.

Peck thus reconstructs the life of a man whose work was ahead of its time, leaving an indelible mark on the history of photography and the fight against racial injustice.