Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata, Grande Otelo, was one of Brazil's greatest actors and comedians. Orphan and grandson of enslaved persons, he escaped from poverty to create a career breaking all imaginable barriers for a black actor in Brazil. He worked with filmmakers like Orson Welles, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Werner Herzog, Julio Bressane and Nelson Pereira dos Santos, among many others. While the press took advantage of his polemics, Otelo shaped his own storyline repaying the racism which dogged him through eight decades, two dictatorships and more than 100 films.