Altitude Picks Up Raoul Peck’s ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ For UK
Altitude Film Distribution has picked up UK rights to Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, the feature documentary based on James Baldwin’s notes for an unfinished novel Remember This House. The book is considered one of the great incomplete works of American literature, where Baldwin attempts to recount the lives and successive assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Samuel L. Jackson narrates the film and turns 30 pages of the book that Baldwin wrote before his passing in 1987 into a tale of murders, martyrs, politics and race while taking a look at how racial and economic equality in the 1950s and 1960s has shaped present day attitudes to race.
The documentary, which was picked up by Magnolia in Toronto last month for North American rights, won the Grolsch People’s Choice Documentary Award at TIFF.
Deal was negotiated by Ellie Gibbons of Altitude Film Entertainment with Elise Cochin from WIDE House on behalf of the filmmakers.
In a tough UK distribution climate, Altitude has seen success in the documentary space with the recent release of My Scientology Movie, Louis Theroux’s first theatrical feature documentary, directed by John Dower, which has notched up £768,993 ($993,905) at the UK box office in 10 days. Story sees Theroux immerse himself in Scientology’s religious teachings and practices with one of its key defectors Mark Rathbun. Last year, the company released Amy Winehouse doc Amy, which took a hefty $5.7M in UK cinemas.
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