Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Name: Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
Genre: Documentary
Released: November 22, 2024
Duration: 105 min
Rating: 82

2024

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Universal acclaim based on 11 Critic Reviews

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Ernest Cole: Lost And Found

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Movie Details & Credits

Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: November 22, 2024 | Not Rated

Summary: Ernest Cole was one of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa, whose early pictures, shocking at the time of their first publication, revealed to the world Black life under apartheid. Cole fled South Africa in 1966 and lived in exile in the U.S., where he photographed extensively in New York City, as well as the AmericanErnest Cole was one of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa, whose early pictures, shocking at the time of their first publication, revealed to the world Black life under apartheid. Cole fled South Africa in 1966 and lived in exile in the U.S., where he photographed extensively in New York City, as well as the American South, fascinated by the ways this country could be at times so vastly different, and at others eerily similar, to the segregated culture of his homeland. During this period, he published his landmark book of photographs denouncing the apartheid, House of Bondage which, while banned in South Africa, cemented Cole’s place as one of the great photographers of his time at the age of 27. After his death, more than 60,000 of his 35mm film negatives were inexplicably discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden. … Expand

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 105 min

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Critic Reviews

Liam Lacey

Dec 2, 2024

Peck’s fleet approach briskly compresses a great deal of information without clumsy interview setups and joins the dots between Black political and artistic freedom then and now while literally gives an important activist-artist a voice again. Read full review

Robert Daniels

Nov 21, 2024

Peck’s film is a rich chronicling of Cole’s unique career, peerless artistry, political strength and moving end. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Nov 21, 2024

Watching “Lost and Found,” you’re moved by a life that veered into tragedy, yet the place it lands lifts you up. More than a great photographer, Ernest Cole captured something essential. By the end you feel the ghost is speaking to you. Read full review

Tara Brady

Mar 6, 2025

Stanfield and Peck movingly channel their late subject against the sweep of history: “The total man does not live one experience.” Read full review

The Guardian Peter Bradshaw

Mar 10, 2025

Peck’s film, in which LaKeith Stanfield narrates a kind of heightened, fictionalised first-person account from Cole’s own writings and diaries, is devastatingly sad. It is the sadness of an artist who becomes estranged, not merely from his homeland, but from his art and his livelihood. Read full review

Lucy Peters

Mar 10, 2025

Ultimately, the lasting message of Lost and Found is discovered in the heart of its subject’s work, and the undeniable power of his uncompromising camera lens – frames transformed into cinema, an abrasive reckoning with the edifice of the past. Read full review

IndieWire Vikram Murthi

Nov 21, 2024

Cole clearly deserves as many posthumous tributes as the culture can afford, especially since he received so little in his lifetime, but reverence, particularly as a way of combatting decades of indifference, isn’t necessarily the best solution Read full review

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