Claude Lanzmann is a French writer and the director of a number of films, including the nine-and-a-half-hour classic Shoah (1985), which was described by The Washington Post as “the film event of the century” and is regarded internationally as a historical and cinematic breakthrough. Lanzmann is chief editor of Les Temps Modernes, which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.