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Wenzel Storch, born March 21, 1961, in Braunschweig, was an acolyte during his time at school and did his civilian national service in an old people"s home. Without any film experience, Storch, who had relocated to Hildesheim in the meantime, started to shoot his first film on Super 8 in 1986. The shooting of the film with an amateur team consisting of friends and acquaintances took until 1989. "Der Glanz dieser Tage" tells the story of a young man who wants to become a priest and has to carry out horrible tests to do so.
As in his following films, Storch told his story that bordered on the fantastic in surreal images, with an eccentric humour, an excessive imagination and sometimes drastic plot twists, beyond all conventions of taste - and despite lowest imaginable budgets with an opulent décor that was mainly put together from his perennial collection and handicraft work. With his next project, "Sommer der Liebe" (1990-1992), Storch turned to the flower power era and a wandering hippie messiah called Oleander. "Die Reise ins Glück" ("A Journey Into Bliss"), finished in 2004 after a production phase of nearly ten years and Storch"s most recent film, is the fairy-tale like completion of the "Jürgen Höhne trilogy", named after the leading actor of all three films. The story of captain Gustav and the evil king Knuffi not only sees amateur actors – and animals – but also a couple of celebrities, including the singer Max Raabe and the writers Horst Tomayer and Harry Rowohlt in the roles of singers and speakers. Jörg Buttgereit is also seen in a guest performance.
Wenzel Storch serves as the producer, screenplay writer, director, cinematographer, and distributor of his films and is a completely independent, yet marginal, filmmaker in his style of filming. The reception of his works ranges from partly moral contempt and disgust ("trash", "amateurism") to fascination and cultish veneration. Particularly since "Die Reise ins Glück", several critics from "Spiegel" to "taz" have compared Storch to directors like Terry Gilliam, Federico Fellini, or Luis Bunuel.
Wenzel Storch lives in Hildesheim and currently works mainly as a writer, for instance, for "Konkret". At the 2009 Leipzig book fair, he presented his first book "Die Bulldozer Gottes".