Alexei Aïgui, born in Moscow in 1971, is a composer for film music and a violinist. Classically trained, he later turned to conducting and composition. He has composed over 70 film scores, including for The Truth by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck (Oscar-nominated, with a 2017 Cinema Eye Honors nomination), Chercher Hortense, and Le Tableau Volé by Pascal Bonitzer. Recently, he composed the score for Ernest Cole. Lost and Found by Raoul Peck, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1994, he founded the Ensemble 4'33'', a groundbreaking project praised by Russian critics. As a violinist, he has collaborated with Pierre Bastien, Mina Agossi, Dietmar Bonnen, and Keisuke Ohta. His music is performed by renowned musicians such as Alexei Lubimov and Tatiana Gridenko. His discography includes over 20 albums distributed worldwide.
by Raoul Peck · 106’ · France, États-Unis · 2023 · VFSTA
Ernest Cole, a South African photographer was the first to expose the horrors of Apartheid to a world audience. His book "House of Bondage", published in 1967 when he was only 27 years old, led him into exile in NYC and Europe for the rest of his life, never to find his bearings. Raoul Peck recounts his wanderings, his turmoil as an artist and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence or complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime. He also recounts how, in 2017, 60,000 negatives of his work were discovered in the safe of a Swedish bank.