A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman on AllMovie

Based in part on the best-selling memoir Heading South, Looking North, Peter Raymont's documentary tells the remarkable story of Ariel Dorfman, the Argentinean-born author and one-time cultural advisor to the chief of staff of Socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende. The acclaimed author of such works as Death and the Maiden and Other Septembers, Many Americas, Dorfman was raised in New York but exiled to Chile during the Red Scare of the 1950s -- a happening which inexorably altered the course of his entire life. When Allende's democratically elected government was overthrown on September 11, 1973, and the majority of Allende's staff was systematically executed, Dorfman's life was spared, so that he could "tell the story." This is his story.