Flight into the Jungle

A film by Michael Juncker

Seeking refuge from the Nazis, the first German emigrants arrived in their new home during the Thirties: Rolandia, Parana. 1,000 kilometers from Rio, in the middle of the Brazilian jungle, German doctors, lawyers and politicians were forced to become farmers. They burned the jungle around them and farmed the land.

In Germany, these refugees had found a legal loophole in the Nazi currency laws by buying land certificates from a British land settlement company. Upon arrival in Brazil, the emigrants received a piece of land in exchange for these certificates. A German settlement began to grow: Divided by a river, with predominantly Jewish settlers on one side; on the other side, German settlers who had moved up from southern Brazil, many of them Nazis.

Beginning in 1942, another colony was established nearby. Known as El Dorado, it had a castle-like building in the middle, surrounded by watchtowers, barbed wire and jungle. A safe haven for the Nazi elite.

Rolandia, a small town at the end of the world, brought Hitler‘s victims together with Hitler‘s henchmen. Flight into the jungle tells a story which has never been told before.

Author and Director	Michael Juncker
Director of Photography	Bernd Meiners
Sound Mixer	Pascal Capitolin
Editor	Gisela Castronari
Music	Gert Wilden jun.
Consultant	Clara Fabry
Supervising Producer	Bjoern Jensen
Coproducer	Simone Stewens (BR), Klaus Liebe (WDR), Dagmar Filoda (NDR)
Producer	Joerg Bundschuh