animated short

Rukeli

Date:
Duration:
5'
Genre:
Animation
Format:
Color 4k

Production: Antropica, Sideways Studios, Film i Väst

In association with: Mad Entertainment

In collaboration with: Chi rom e…chi no

Producers: Parsifal Reparato, Samir Arabzadeh, Fredrik Svensson, Jenny Luukkonen

Authors: Biagio Di Bennardo, Emma Ferulano

Director:: Alessandro Rak

Music: Marco Sica

Editor: Andrea Scoppetta

Johann Wilhelm Trollmann becomes middleweight champion in Nazi Germany. He is the first Sinto, Gypsy, in world boxing to win this title. He is famous for his fighting style, which resembles a dance. With the enactment of the racial laws, he is stripped of his title, separated from his wife and daughter, subjected to chemical castration, and imprisoned in the Wittenberge and Neuengamme concentration camps, where he will die at age 37. Before he dies, reduced to a skeleton, he fights for the last time with a Nazi kapo who recognizes and challenges him. Against all odds, Rukeli, which in the Sinti language means tree, the Gipsy, knocks out the Nazi and with him the entire apparatus of power he represents. The next day he will be punished and killed for it, but Rukeli had decided to die a champion.

Dedicated to little Michelle Seferovic, who died on 13 January 2024 in Giugliano (Napoli, Italy) settlement, an innocent victim of carelessness and neglect of public institutions and racial discrimination.

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