French director Claude Lanzmann was one of the greatest documentarians of the genocide of Europe's Jews. And, as the director revealed in his much-lauded autobiography, he was himself also a witness to 20th century history. He has been a fighter in the communist resistance to the Nazis, a journalist, a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the publisher of France's best-known philosophy magazine, "Les Temps Modernes" and a formidable figure. His nine-and-a-half hour documentary "Shoah" (France 1985) has gone down in film history as an unparalleled masterpiece of commemorative culture.

Source: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin