Italy/Sweden 2025. Runtime: 5 min. Italian (English subtitles)

Regional premiere

Director: Alessandro Rak
Production: AntropicA, Sideway Studios, Film i Väst in association with Mad Entertainment, Chi rom e… chi no, University of Bologna (Department of Education Sciences), ITI Galileo Ferraris Naples, Rai Cinema
Cast: Antonio De Matteo
Screenplay: Biagio Di Bennardo, Emma Ferulano
Editing: Andrea Scoppetta
Music: Marco Sica
Sound: Andreas Mellkvist

SYNOPSIS
Johann Wilhelm Trollmann became the middleweight champion in Nazi Germany. He was the first Romani person to win this title in world boxing. He is famous for his fighting style, which resembled a dance. With the enactment of the racial laws, he was 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 died at the age of 37. Before dying, reduced to a skeleton, he fought one last time against a Nazi kapo who recognized and challenged him. Against all odds, Rukeli—which means “tree” in Romani—knocked out the Nazi, and with him, the entire apparatus of power he represented. The following day he was punished and killed for it, but Rukeli had decided to die as a champion.