Sportsfreund Lötzsch tells the exciting and tragic life story of the GDR’s great cycling talent, Wolfgang Lötzsch. When he competed, he won. But Wolfgang Lötzsch never imagined that his career would become such a tough course. He was anything but a revolutionary, he was simply not an opportunist. But that was enough to incur the displeasure of an entire state. Thus began the gauntlet of Wolfgang Lötzsch, seventeen years of cycling against an icy wind. From victory to victory, but never beyond the borders of the GDR, never in a really big race. “He hasn’t seen the sun”, that’s what they called it back then. He has still not overcome his fate of falling into the clutches of the Stasi and being “delegated out”. His story is a classic drama about friendship and betrayal, opportunism and resistance. And it tells how a person who is not political in himself develops a power of resistance that upsets an entire state apparatus.

Book + Direction: Sandra Prechtel, Sascha Hilpert
Camera: Marcus Winterbauer, Susanne Schühle
Cut: Katja Dringenberg
Music: Jan Tilman Schade
Sound: Ulla Kösterke
Editorial: Bayerischer Rundfunk, Telepool
Production management: Gunter Hanfgarn, Andrea Ufer
Production: Gunter Hanfgarn, Andrea Ufer
Broadcasters: Bayerischer Rundfunk

1st prize, cinema documentary film competition of Bayerischer Rundfunk and Telepool, 2005
Discovery Channel Publikumspreis, DOK Leipzig, 2007