Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist of Words | Documentary with rare interviews and private footage

A storyteller hailed as having the power to inspire nations and change people's lives, Paulo Coelho is one of the most widely read authors in the world today. He is a deeply spiritual person who believes in engaging with the mysteries of life and one who tries to share his inner quest with his readers. Shot on location in Brazil, Iran and Spain, and centring on conversations with Coelho, this documentary uses a wealth of material to tell his story and explore the many faces of an intriguing man.

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The Brazilian author Paulo Coelho (b. 1947) has sold more than thirty-two million books and his most famous work, The Alchemist (1988), was a number one bestseller in twenty-nine countries. His writing has been translated into fifty-one languages and published in more than one hundred territories.

Coelho's life has been extraordinary:

▷ 00:00 Introduction
▷ 05:38 When, as a shy adolescent, he told his parents of his desire to write they took him to a psychiatrist and he spent three spells in a mental hospital.
▷ 11:20 The realisation that he was not the only one rejecting a conventional lifestyle came with his discovery of the 'Hippie' movement and, with it, large amounts of drugs and sex.
▷ 13:11 At the end of the 1960s he became rich overnight as a pop song-writer. The alternative nature of some of his lyrics resulted in him being imprisoned and tortured by the secret police while Brazil was under military rule.
▷ 16:44 He rose to be artistic director of CBS in Brazil and was then fired without explanation.
▷ 19:07 In the early 1980s he was introduced to RAM - the order of Regnus Agnus Mundi - a tiny sect with Catholic origins which studies a symbolic language known as The Tradition, passed down orally.
▷ 20:11 The final part of his initiation was a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and it was this that, at the age of thirty-eight, finally led him to write his first book, The Pilgrimage.
Other titles by Coelho have included The Valkyries (1992), By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994) The Fifth Mountain (1996), Veronika Decides to Die (1998) and The Devil and Miss Prym (2001).

Directed by Marcelo Gomes.

© Licensed by Digital Classics Distribution