Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: November 22, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
82
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 11 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Original-CinLiam LaceyDec 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
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanNov 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
90
Screen DailyRobert DanielsNov 21, 2024
Peck’s film is a rich chronicling of Cole’s unique career, peerless artistry, political strength and moving end. Read full review
90
The New York TimesLisa KennedyNov 21, 2024
The result is an elegantly wrought documentary that pulls off the trick of leaving viewers sated yet also craving more. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeMar 10, 2025
The narration, by LaKeith Stanfield, speaks on behalf of the photographer, who died in 1990. It’s through his remarkable pictures of South Africa and Black America, however, that we really hear his voice. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 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
80
Little White LiesLucy PetersMar 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
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyMar 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
75
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloNov 22, 2024
From Cole's own words and interviews with his friends and loved ones, Peck writes a thorough narrative through the highs and lows of the photographer's life, including details about his childhood in South Africa and many years of homesickness abroad. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineDerek SmithNov 18, 2024
The film paints a vivid portrait of what life was like for Black South Africans under apartheid. Read full review
58
IndieWireVikram MurthiNov 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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