France to pay tribute to director Claude Lanzmann

Lanzmann had never stopped working, regularly presenting films which often took their inspiration from chapters of his own life

France will pay tribute on Thursday to filmmaker and writer Claude Lanzmann, known for his landmark Holocaust documentary, who died last week aged 92, his family announced Tuesday in Le Monde daily. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will deliver a speech at a ceremony at the Invalides military hospital and museum in Paris, his office said. Lanzmann will then be buried at his family vault at the Montparnasse cemetery in the French capital. The revered director's landmark 1985 documentary "Shoah" revealed the horrors of the Holocaust over nine hours of chilling eyewitness accounts. He worked constantly since the 1972 release of his first film, "Israel, Why", often taking chapters of his own life as inspiration. Last year, he presented at the Cannes film festival "Napalm", about his brief but intense romance with a North Korean nurse in 1958. And his last film, "The Four Sisters", about four Holocaust survivors, was released in French cinemas just this week. But it was the 1985 release of "Shoah" (the Hebrew word for "calamity" often used for the Holocaust), which is widely considered the most haunting film made about the murder of six million Jews during World War II that propelled him to global acclaim. Lanzmann had never stopped working, regularly presenting films which often took their inspiration from chapters of his own life