A graduate of Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, he also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Later he worked towards, but never completed, a doctorate at Stanford University.  He donated his early papers and films to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research.

Landau authored 14 books, produced and directed over 50 documentary films, and wrote editorial columns posted on his blog. He also had articles posted in magazines and journals including the Huffington Post   Cuban diplomat Ricardo Alarcon, said Saul Landau is a “a real combatant with no other weapons than his talent and intellectual integrity” while awarding him the Medal of Friendship in 2013.  Landau was a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and a senior fellow and former director of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.

He received an Emmy for his film Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang (1980), which he co-directed with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Haskell Wexler. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award 1981 for “Best Fact Crime” for Assassination on Embassy Row (with John Dinges; Pantheon 1980) about the murder of TNI Director Orlando Letelier and their colleague and friend Ronnie Karpen-Moffitt. He was given the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award for his life’s contribution to human rights and also received the Bernado O’Higgins award.  In the early 1960s, he was a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and wrote the play “The Minstrel Show.” At that time he was also working as a film distributor.  Landau donated his Latin American-related films and papers to the University of California, Riverside Libraries in 2005.  He frequently appeared on radio and TV shows.  Gore Vidal said, “Saul Landau is a man I love to steal ideas from.”  Landau died after battling bladder cancer for two years on September 9, 2013 at his home in Alameda, California. He was 77.