"Haitian director Raoul Peck knows how to make films that move you and shake you to the core."

More about the first film I ever worked on, as a journalist, researcher, writer, for the amazing filmmaker Raoul Peck, in English:

FILM: The Young Karl Marx

28/09/2017 BY NEPTUNE 

29 September 2017

THE YOUNG KARL MARX **** (vo German, French, English)

Haitian director Raoul Peck knows how to make films that move you and shake you to the core.

The Young Karl Marx - Trailer [en]

As a political militant, he makes films about history, humanity and injustices that cause you to reflect and feel the larger truths with your gut, literally.

The first film of his that I saw was I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, a searing documentary on James Baldwin and the assassinations of three great black figures. It was a haunting experience. In this film he has taken up the life and works of Marx, instigator of one of the most important social revolutions in history, along with his friend Frederick Engels.

To go from documentary to a feature film based on historical facts is not a given, but Peck has managed it with both mastery and discretion. From the excellent dialogue, acting, editing, the intermingling of languages depending on the locations, and the delicate music, he pulls us into the young lives of Marx and Engels in the 1840s, as they took on the incredible idea of setting workers free and giving them decent wages. It was a dangerous and revolutionary idea for the times.

From Germany to Manchester, Paris, London and Brussels, Peck follows dedicated men and women who believed in the new idea of equality and freedom from the slave labor of the Industrial Revolution – a revolution that had benefited the industrialists and condemned the workers to poverty and horrific living conditions.

This is an eye-opener of the first order, above and beyond our knowledge of the Communist movement or our opinion of it. As in I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, Peck seems to be continuously capable of transmitting larger ideas. Here he makes us witness to the details and importance of the ideals of the Communist movement, rather than the flaws in its later manifestations.