“Outro Sertão” (Another Sertão) is a documentary about João Guimarães Rosa's stay in Nazi Germany. The film captures the experience of the Brazilian vice-consul in Hamburg between 1938 and 1942, at the height of the Nazi regime and during the first years of the World War II. Using his writings from that time, as well as archive pictures, documents, survivors testimonies, and an unpublished interview with him, the film reveals new biographical aspects of one of the greatest Brazilian writers of all time.

Divided into chapters – arrival, the friend, the diary, the writer, the diplomat, the alarm and departure – the documentary presents fascinating footage, filmed in large part by amateurs oblivious to the official aesthetics of Nazi propaganda. Unpublished documents (German and Brazilian) and the testimonies of Jews who fled to Brazil via Hamburg, as well as of friends and critics, help retrieve João Guimarães Rosa’s experience in Nazi Germany.

Marion Heubel, Detlef Heubel, Wander Melo Miranda, Eneida Maria de Souza, Reinaldo Martiniano Marques, João Guimarães Rosa, Walter Hollerer