# Exterminate All the Brutes (2021)

> A four-part HBO docuseries narrated by Raoul Peck that traces European colonial genocide from the Americas to Africa and its lingering effects on today's world.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/98107

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 4
- Episode runtime: 59 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: documentary, history
- Created by: Raoul Peck
- Network: HBO
- Cast: Raoul Peck, Josh Hartnett, Bakary Sangaré, Tibo Vandenborre, David Baïot, Habib Diakhaby, Tella Kpomahou, Sven Lindqvist
- TMDB rating: 7.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8396314/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: grave, confrontational, indignant, sober, analytical

## Synopsis

Exterminate All the Brutes (2021) is a four-episode HBO docuseries created by Raoul Peck, a hybrid documentary that works as a sweeping, essayistic history. Director Raoul Peck narrates in his own voice across the episodes, guiding viewers through archival footage, dramatized reenactments and expert testimony. Actors including Josh Hartnett appear in staged sequences portraying colonists, while the series assembles a cast of historians and voices to examine how European empires exploited and destroyed populations from the Americas to Africa. The story moves through the Congo, Haiti, the Native American genocide and the transatlantic slave trade, linking each atrocity to the ideologies of racial hierarchy that followed. Its engine is the argument itself: a relentless effort to show that the violence of the past shaped the wealth, borders and nationalism of the present. Episodes are built from dense archival material, maps, paintings and reenactment, giving the series a grave, confrontational tone that balances outrage with analysis. Unlike a case-of-the-week format, it is a single continuous argument told across a limited run. Viewers drawn to serious historical documentary in the vein of I Am Not Your Negro and 13th will find the same moral seriousness here, with an emphasis on how the past remains the present.

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