[3] His film I Am Not Your Negro (2016), about the life of James Baldwin and race relations in the United States, was nominated for an Oscar in January 2017 and won a César Award in France.

His father Hebert B. Peck, an agronomist, worked for the United Nations FAO and UNESCO and had taken a job there as professor of agriculture along with many Haitian professionals invited by the government to fill positions recently vacated by Belgians departing after independence.

Peck attended schools in Kinshasa, DRC, in Brooklyn, New York and in Orléans, France where he earned a baccalauréat, before studying industrial engineering and economics at Berlin's Humboldt University.

[9] Peck detailed his experiences in this position in a book, Monsieur le Ministre… jusqu'au bout de la patience.

[10] On the book's re-release in 2015, Radio Metropole Haïti reviewed it as a portrait of "a formidable democratic movement that profoundly changed the country".

Then, in 1983, he continued with Exzerpt, where he took on a critical and playful point of view on Grüne Woche (Green Week), the biggest dietary and agricultural fair in Germany.

[14] A few years after Peck directed Haitian Corner, a producer asked him to write a screenplay about a Swiss doctor's "downward spiral" in Africa before returning to his native country as a "liberated" man.

This project questioned the point of view of the "black" hero, which was contrary to the usual approach where a "European" character told this genre, which investors accepted more readily (example: Steve Biko in Cry Freedom).

[16] Two years later in 1993, Peck returned to a more Haitian- specific theme with a feature, The Man by The Shore, a fictional story about the beginning of "Duvalierism" and the implementation of the process of terror through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl.

[17][18] The story of "Sarah, a girl who accepts her past demons and decides to live with them," got him a nomination for a Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

The documentary, which contains a fictitious narrator and real interviews with Haitians, focuses on the tragedies caused by the economic collapse of Haiti, and explores how different people cope.

This mystery about exile and memory centers around a woman born in Haiti and living in New York City, and was the start of his collaborations with the producer Jacques Bidou.

[33] More recently in 2021, Raoul Peck continued his partnership with HBO by directing a four part docu-series, Exterminate All the Brutes (April 2021).

Peck himself narrates the series using both old and new footage and animation to propose white supremacy has been at the historic center of nations and has led to "exterminations" of people around the world.

Peck sets a suspenseful tone to the trailer by ending with the words, "Neutrality is not an option... Over the centuries we lost all bearings because the past has a future we never expect.”[34] The series already has a score of 82% on Rotten Tomatoes and has been described as a "fresh, current and revelatory documentary.

The film takes audiences through the struggles of his native country, Haiti, as he narrates the story that portrays the burden and the toll that capitalism had on its citizens.

[44][45] Raoul Peck decided to go back and take on the character of Patrice Lumumba with a feature film that was accessible to the public.

Peck used real images to unveil the "unwritten controversial history" of how Lumumba led the Republic of Congo towards its independence in 1960.

[48] Lumumba's success in Africa opened many doors for Raoul Peck, and he was able to shoot in Rwanda despite the initial difficulties (logistics, insurance, human resources).

"[50] In competition in Berlin, Sometimes in April, aired in the United States with huge success and was even broadcast by the national public chain, PBS, for free.

[52] In 2016, Peck directed a documentary film, I Am Not Your Negro, which follows author James Baldwin, as he used his "unfinished novel, Remember This House" to highlight the history of society's poor treatment of African Americans in the United States.

The book and film highlight real letters and footage of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers to put into perspective the evolution of racism in the United States.

The site's critical consensus reads, "I Am Not Your Negro offers an incendiary snapshot of James Baldwin's crucial observations on American race relations -- and a sobering reminder of how far we've yet to go.

"[63] The Young Karl Marx took home the Founders Grand Prize for 'best script' at the Traverse City Film Fest in 2017.

In this way, he uses more complex approaches like collages, time overlay of the story, flash-forward, or flashback, the recurrent use of voice-over, the author, character, and the object point of view according to the needs of the project.

These multiple approaches, both formal and structurally aesthetic, allow for the organic mix of politics, history, poetry, and the personal.

"[66] Peck had the opportunity to renew this type of collaboration in the United States with writer Russel Banks (with two ongoing projects).

[citation needed] The documentary approach is similar to that of the fiction for Peck (voice-over, a mix of politics, history, memory, poetry).

For that matter, whether it be Haitian Corner, Lumumba, Sometimes in April, or L'Affaire Villemin, the uses of reality, documents, and truthful and lived details, is constant.

During an interview with Professor Meryem Belkaïd at Bowdoin College in Maine, Peck stated, "Especially in America, cinema is an industry that claims that its purpose is entertainment … The tendency is to please the audience, it is not so much to provoke."