Las mil vidas de Jorge Semprún

Documentary that portrays the incredible life and legacy of Jorge Semprún. Exile, Buchenwald concentration camp survivor, writer, filmmaker, prestigious Europeanist, clandestine communist leader and Spanish Minister of Culture under Felipe Gonzalez.Born into an upper middle-class family committed to Republican ideas, Semprun (Madrid 1923) fled with his family during the Spanish Civil War and in 1939 entered the prestigious Lycée Henri-IV in Paris. At the age of 20 he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Buchenwald, where he joined the communist cells. After abandoning writing upon his return from the camps ("The decision to forget led to the decision not to write"), he worked as a translator and rose through the ranks of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), where he was in charge of rebuilding the clandestine networks under the name of Federico Sanchez. After Le grand voyage, published in 1963, and his expulsion from the PCE, Jorge Semprún devoted himself entirely to writing, between autobiographical stories and film screenplays - he was nominated for an Oscar for Alain Resnais' La guerre est finie and Costa-Gavras' Z. Spanish Minister of Culture from 1988 to 1991, in the Socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez, he made European integration the last intellectual battle of his life. He died in Paris in 2011.