During the summer of 2010, director Franck Apprederis filmed 10 hours of interviews with Jorge Sempr¿n for an episode of the documentary series Empreintes, on France 5. The two men had been friends for decades. With his characteristic style – a blend of openness and reserve – Jorge Sempr¿n looks back over the whole of his oeuvre, as well as the exceptional path of his life: a brilliant Spaniard who studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, a deportee who “bore witness” to Buchenwald, an Communist who was first disappointed by and later excluded from the Party, Minister of Culture in post-Franco Spain... This eyewitness to the major upheavals of the 20th century describes his life and work with humor, lucidity, erudition and an irrepressible joie de vivre.
Together, his confidences and thoughtful comments – which have been arranged thematically and enriched with a section of hitherto unpublished photos – compose the portrait of one of the great minds of post-war Europe: an ordinary hero in the fight for justice and human dignity, a singular champion of the European adventure and the power of culture to stand against the culture of power.

The last major statement from one of the great men of the last century, a militant writer and lucid witness to the upheavals of recent History.