18 minutes, four lives, one unstoppable rebel with a microphone.
Gerd Wenzel was born in Berlin, and as a boy he arrived in Brazil as a refugee from East Germany. Here, he was a pastor, found himself a football commentator and, today, recovered social and political activism. At 75, after fleeing the Second World War, overcoming Nazism, being persecuted by the military dictatorship and never getting tired of the fight for freedom ... Gerd, a good friend, has a story to tell.
Direction
Paulo Junior lets Gerd's kitchen-table charisma do all the heavy lifting.
Writing
Economic storytelling: decades of trauma, hope, and football in under 20 minutes.
Director
Paulo Junior
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Brazil quietly became home to thousands of German refugees post-WWII, yet their stories rarely intersect with the country's dominant narrative of Italian and Japanese immigration. Gerd's presence in the documentary fills a historical gap.
The kitchen setting isn't casual—it's where Gerd hosted decades of clandestine meetings during the dictatorship, making the film's intimacy politically loaded.
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