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Christoph Terhechte has been confirmed in his position managing and artistic director as of the DOK Leipzig film festival. At its meeting last week, the Leipzig City Council agreed to extend his contract for three years. This means that Christoph Terhechte, who has headed DOK Leipzig since 1 January 2020, will continue to direct the festival until January 2028. The mayor was authorised to take the appropriate decision at the shareholders’ meeting of Leipziger Dok-Filmwochen GmbH.
For 25 years, Christoph Terhechte has been a major player in the international film festival scene. From 2001 to 2018, he headed the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale and made it a global trendsetter in independent arthouse cinema. Before taking over the helm at DOK Leipzig, he was the artistic director of the International Film Festival in Marrakech. Prior to his involvement in film festivals, Terhechte, who had studied political science and journalism, was a film critic in Paris and Berlin for a number of years.
Following a successful festival this autumn, which featured more than 200 documentary and animated films and extended reality experiences, the next edition of DOK Leipzig will be held from 28 October to 3 November 2024.
The 66th edition of DOK Leipzig came to a close on Sunday, 15 October. The Golden and Silver Doves as well as the partnership awards were presented in two award ceremonies on Saturday. In total, the festival counted 45,500 attendees at its cinema screenings, panel discussions, industry events and the DOK Neuland XR exhibition. From 8 to 15 October, audiences had the opportunity to see 225 films and XR works from around 60 countries in venues around Leipzig. In addition, one film a day was available online for 24 hours throughout Germany in the DOK Stream.
The films in the Audience Competition and the opening film, “White Angel – The End of Marinka”, which opens in cinemas across Germany on 19 October, were particularly well received. Audiences were also very enthusiastic about the short films in the International Competitions and the Animation Night with Tess Martin. The Animation Perspectives section as well as both matinees related to the theme of the Retrospective “Film and Protest – Popular Uprisings in the Cold War” were filled to capacity.
The free screenings at the main station attracted more than 2,000 people. DOK Neuland was also at capacity. About 1,000 people came to see the exhibition of immersive XR works at the Museum der bildenden Künste.
Festival director Christoph Terhechte looked back upon an eventful and intense festival week: “The cinemas were packed, and there were many excellent discussions about film in which the audience was very involved. Although the week was overshadowed by the recent massacres, expulsions and bombings in Israel and Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, many of our attendees used the festival as an opportunity to exchange views on those issues and current events.”
The DOK Industry events also met with great interest. At the second edition of the DOK Archive Market, more international archives and footage libraries introduced their collections than in the previous year. All in all, DOK Industry welcomed more than 1,700 accredited professionals.
During the week of the festival, 24 awards were presented, including the nine Golden and Silver Doves. The 10,000-euro Golden Dove Feature-Length Film in the International Competition Documentary Film went to Peter Mettler for his documentary “While the Green Grass Grows” (Switzerland, Canada). The newly created Golden Dove for a feature-length animated film went to Xu Jingwei for “No Changes Have Taken in Our Life” (China).
The 67th edition of DOK Leipzig will take place from 28 October to 3 November 2024.
The seven Golden Doves and two Silver Doves of the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig were awarded at the Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig on Saturday.
In the International Competition Documentary Film, the Golden Dove Feature-Length Film went to Peter Mettler, to whom this year’s homage was dedicated, for “While the Green Grass Grows”. This cinematic diary draws upon the Swiss-Canadian filmmaker’s own memories and family relationships as it looks at life cycles and the way the world is constantly changing. “An unpredictable film whose quality of observation makes the viewer see everyday events, places and objects in a poetic new light” is how the jury described it. The 10,000-euro Golden Dove is sponsored by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. The award was presented by MDR commission editor for documentaries Thomas Beyer.
The Golden Dove Short Film, which includes 3,000 euros in prize money, was presented to Bo Wang for “An Asian Ghost Story” (Netherlands, Hong Kong), a search for traces based on the 1965 US embargo against “communist” real hair wigs from Asia. The jury called it “a smart, hip, funny amalgam of fact and fiction made with exceptional craft”.
The films that have earned Golden Doves in the International Competition Documentary Film qualify for nomination for the annual Academy Awards®, provided they meet the Academy’s standards.
The Silver Dove Feature-Length Film, sponsored by 3sat, for the best feature-length documentary by an up-and-coming director, was awarded to Hovhannes Ishkhanyan for the Armenian-French production “Beauty and the Lawyer”. The jury praised it as “a film that builds an intimate relationship with its characters who generously let us into their lives as they invent a new path to deal with a homophobic world”. Johannes Dicke, head of programming at 3sat, presented the filmmaker with the 6,000-euro award.
The Silver Dove Short Film, which includes 1,500 euros for the best short documentary by an up-and-coming director, sponsored by the Sächsische Landesanstalt für privaten Rundfunk und neue Medien (Saxon State Agency for Commercial Broadcasting and New Media, SLM), went to “30 Kilometres per Second” by Jani Peltonen (Finland). The jury described it as “a film which, by using the montage as its main strategy, unveils potentialities for this cinematic direction.” The award was presented by Katja Röckel from the SLM’s Media Council.
The winners of the International Competition Documentary Film were selected by Jennifer Fox, Radu Jude, Marie-Pierre Macia, Steven Markovitz and Rima Mismar.
In the International Competition Animated Film, the newly created Golden Dove Feature-Length Film, endowed with 3,000 euros, went to Xu Jingwei for “No Changes Have Taken in Our Life” (China), the story of a musician who tries in vain to find work after graduating from university. The jury called it “a courageous and challenging film that is as specific as it is universal, and as critical as it is witty, tackling the uncomfortable subject of dreariness and a lack of perspective”.
The Golden Dove Short Film in conjunction with 1,500 euros, sponsored by the Deutsches Institut für Animationsfilm e. V., was awarded to Barbara Rupik for “Such Miracles Do Happen” (Poland). In its statement, the jury said: “The film uses outstanding technique of a kind of liquid stop-motion animation, which is also irreplaceable and deeply connected to its theme.” Dr Volker Petzold (chairman of DIAF) addressed the audience at the award ceremony.
The film that earns the Golden Dove Short Film qualifies for nomination for the annual Academy Awards®, provided it meets the Academy’s standards.
Jury members Pavel Horáček, Anne Isensee and Irina Rubina also awarded a Special Mention to Tomek Popakul and Kasumi Ozeki for the animated Polish short film “Zima”.
In the German Competition Documentary Film, the Golden Dove Feature-Length Film went to “One Hundred Four” by Jonathan Schörnig, a real-time documentation of a rescue at sea on the Mediterranean. “The film team and the crew of the rescue ship show us clearly what it means when we look the other way every day. But they also show that help is possible and needed,” the jury emphasised. This 10,000-euro award is sponsored by Doris Apell-Kölmel and Michael Kölmel.
The Golden Dove Short Film, in conjunction with 1,500 euros, was awarded to Franzis Kabisch for “getty abortions” (Germany, Austria), a desktop video essay that explores how media illustrate the topic of abortion. “Our award-winning film finds a convincing contemporary form to address an ancient and at the same time highly topical issue,” said the jury comprised of Birgit Kohler, Claus Löser and Serpil Turhan.
This year’s winner of the Golden Dove in the Audience Competition was selected by jury members Billie Bauermeister, Fritz Czaplinski, Anna Eulitz, Charlotte Hennrich and Annegret Weiß. They honoured Asmae El Moudir for her documentary film “The Mother of All Lies” (Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar). In her search for memories of her childhood, the filmmaker recreates her neighbourhood in Casablanca as an elaborate miniature and in the process comes across a trauma of Moroccan history. “With great fervour and love of detail, a surprising work emerges that dissolves the boundaries between fantasy and reality,” extolled the jury. This 3,000-euro award is sponsored in part by the Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e. V.
Partnership Awards for documentary and animated films in competition
Earlier, on Saturday afternoon, ten Partnership Awards were presented at the Schaubühne Lindenfels.
The DEFA Sponsoring Prize, which includes 4,000 euros and is granted by the DEFA Foundation, went to Julia Charakter for “The Children of Korntal” (Germany).
The 3,000-euro MDR Film Prize for an outstanding eastern European documentary film was awarded to Marianna Kaat for “The Last Relic” (Estonia, Norway).
The Film Prize Leipziger Ring, which honours a documentary film about human rights, democracy or civic engagement, is sponsored by the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution and includes 2,500 euros in prize money. This year’s award went ex aequo to Jonathan Schörnig for “One Hundred Four” (Germany) and Nantenaina Lova for “Where Zebus Speak French” (France, Madagascar, Germany, Burkina Faso).
The Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, which includes 2,000 euros, licensing and subtitling in eight languages, was also awarded to “One Hundred Four” by Jonathan Schörnig.
“One Hundred Four” further received the 1,500-euro ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, bringing the total to four awards, making this the film earning the most honours at DOK Leipzig 2023.
The 2,250-euro Prize of the Interreligious Jury was awarded to Sarah Mallégol for “Kumva – Which Comes from Silence” (France). This award is sponsored by VCH-Hotels Germany along with the VCH-Hotel Michaelis in Leipzig as well as the Interreligious Roundtable and the Oratorium Leipzig.
The Prize of the International Film Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) was awarded to the South Korean production “Universe Department Store” by Taewoong Won.
The mephisto 97.6 Award went to the short animated film “Compound Eyes of Tropical” by Zhang Xu Zhan (Taiwan).
The Gedanken-Aufschluss award went to Nele Dehnenkamp for her first feature-length documentary film, “For the Time Being” (Germany). This award was voted on by a jury comprised of prisoners at the Juvenile Detention Centre Regis-Breitingen.
Five awards were already presented during the week of the festival as part of the industry platform DOK Industry.
Altogether, 24 awards were presented at DOK Leipzig. At the 66th edition of the festival, 225 films and extended reality works from some 60 countries were screened at the venues around Leipzig. The festival’s opening film, “White Angel – The End of Marinka” by Arndt Ginzel, can be seen in cinemas across Germany from 19 October.
All jury statements can be found in the pdf file.
Overview of all awards: Awards & Juries
DOK Leipzig has announced its DOK Industry award winners, presented during the festival week.
At the DOK Co-Pro Market, a total of three awards have been presented. Belarusian director Daria Yurkevich and her project “GENESIS” (Belarus, Germany) has received the Saxon Award for the Best Documentary Project by a Female Director. The prize is endowed with 5,000 euros, sponsored by the Saxon State Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism.
“Divia” (Ukraine, Poland) by Dmytro Hreshko has picked up the Current Time TV Award, endowed with 2,000 euros and sponsored by Current Time TV.
“Shaina 13 to 15” (France) by Tamara Erde has received the Unifrance Doc Award, providing subtitling services, sponsored by TitraFilm, and a Unifrance membership for its French producer.
At DOK Preview Germany, “Johatsu – Into Thin Air” (WT; Germany, Japan), directed by Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori, has been awarded with the D-Facto Motion Works-in-Progress Prize, which comes with the post-production grant of 10,000 euros, sponsored by D-Facto Motion GmbH.
At DOK Short n’ Sweet, "A MOVE" (Iran) by Elahe Esmaili has received the Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg Award, which comes with a Letter of Intent, a short evaluation and one consultation session for sales opportunities.
In Episode 6 of Season 4 of the DOK Industry Podcast, moderator Rama Thiaw invites renowned film editor Niels Pagh Andersen (“The Act of Killing”, “The Look of Silence”), BAFTA-nominated Libyan-British artist and filmmaker Naziha Arebi, and Tunisian-French independent curator and cultural producer Samia Labidi to engage with the questions of a Pluralistic World Cinema and disruptive practices and creations needed in the face of the dominant Western aesthetics. This discussion comes as Western cinema continues to claim universality across time and space while being largely derived from the values and imaginations of those who hold privilege in the West, in particular white men, and to a lesser extent white women, who boast access to the infrastructure and resources.
The episode underlines the need for the international film industry to open up to a plethora of other aesthetics and cinematic languages beyond the Western narrative and artistic conventions and structures that have resulted in a formal and narrative standardisation of films, often stripped of substance and subversiveness. According to Shiaw, Arebi and Labidi, the discourse on diverse cinematic aesthetics beyond the dominant one is thus far more pertinent and complex than approaching it through a strictly decolonial lens and the colonised versus the coloniser dialectic.
At large, the episode addresses these issues in a comprehensive and inclusive manner, embracing the intricacies of a wider conversation that takes into account manifold political, socio-demographic and economic inequalities that hamper the global democratisation of cinema and its industry. Working towards the democratisation of cinema and aesthetics hence entails inviting filmmakers from varied geographies and backgrounds to create new images and representations that will be the archives of tomorrow.
This discussion ultimately grapples with the broader questions of ownership and legacy and the right to tell stories from the so-called Global South, both as individuals and as a collective. Implicitly, the conversation also probes the current notion of the global democratisation of cinema and its industry infrastructure, prompting the question among the podcast speakers: Is it relevant to describe the current cinema as universal, given that the so-called Global South (where the majority of humanity lives) is marginalised by the Global North?
Rama Thiaw is a Senegalese and Mauritanian writer, director, producer and visual artist. Her work includes award-winning feature-length documentaries “Boul Fallé” and “The Revolution Won’t Be Televised”, among others. In 2019, she launched a multidisciplinary art event dedicated to Black Women and Feminism, “The Artistic Sabbar of Dakar”. She has also been a mentor at numerous industry events and markets (Generation Africa, Durban Talent). She was part of the selection committee of the Berlinale’s Panorama Section between 2020 and 2021.
Niels Pagh Andersen has worked as a film editor since 1979 and has edited more than 250 films, including the Academy-Award nominees “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence”, and the Golden Globe nominee “Everlasting Moments”. In recent years, he has also edited several films for Chinese artist, documentarian and activist Ai Weiwei. In 2005, Niels Pagh Andersen received the prestigious Roos Award, the Danish Film Institute’s grand documentary prize for outstanding efforts in documentary filmmaking. In 2021, he published the book “Order in Chaos: Storytelling and Editing in Documentary Film”.
Naziha Arebi is a BAFTA-nominated Libyan-British artist and filmmaker working at the intersection of art and activism, drawn to stories centring on identity, class and collective power. Her films include “Freedom Fields”, “After a Revolution”, “Untold Chaos”, among others. Next to art and filmmaking, Naziha also works as a programmer, mentor and cultural facilitator.
Samia Labidi is a Tunisian-French independent curator and cultural producer. She collaborates with artists’ collectives and cultural institutions as a consultant for artistic and strategic development. She worked with Rawiyat Sisters in Film, and is currently a consultant with the Network of Arab Alternative Screens (NAAS). She is currently based in Tunisia where she also focuses on the research on arts and culture, in and from the MENA region and Africa.
The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective (POC2), with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and MUBI, and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.
Listen to the podcast episode: DOK Industry Podcasts
DOK Leipzig opened on Sunday, 8 October at CineStar in Leipzig with the world premiere of Arndt Ginzel’s film “White Angel – The End of Marinka”.
In his welcoming remarks, festival director Christoph Terhechte emphasised the social and political relevance of the films that the festival is screening: “Not only is the war being waged against Ukraine a theme in several of the films in this year’s programme. Many of them also generally address the relationship between Russia and the now independent states that were once within the Soviet sphere of influence. The retrospective ‘Film and Protest: Popular Uprisings in the Cold War’ provides the historical perspective on this.”
Dr Skadi Jennicke, the City of Leipzig’s Deputy Mayor for Arts and Culture, also spoke at the opening. In her welcoming remarks, she emphasised the importance of DOK Leipzig in a time of uncertainty and the struggle for truth: “A clear commitment to facts, to the strength of the argument and to a critical debate that does not shy away from dissent. Defending these values also means defending our democracy. DOK Leipzig is a good venue for this,” Dr Jennicke said. “For the City of Leipzig, the festival is an indispensable highlight of the arts scene and an ambassador for Leipzig.” Christoph Terhechte thanked Jennicke for her long-standing and ongoing support.
Saxon Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Barbara Klepsch, who was unable to attend the opening, also expressed support for DOK Leipzig in her remarks: “The opening of the DOK festival begins a week-long international dialogue between representatives of the film industry and the audience, turning the eyes of the entire world to Leipzig and Saxony. The films that have been selected are not only entertaining; they also draw from current political discussions and take a critical look at the world in which we live. At the same time, the DOK festival is where current artistic developments and personal styles in documentary and animated film are presented. I am also delighted by the fact that the festival practises its philosophy of enabling broad participation in a very tangible way by offering free screenings at the Central Station and the Museum der bildenden Künste, giving everyone the opportunity to see wonderful and thought-provoking films.”
Representing the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism at the opening event was Markus Franke, head of the ministry’s arts division. Franke announced the recipient of the Saxon Award for the Best Documentary Project by a Female Director, which is endowed with 5,000 euros and is sponsored by the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism. Projects by female directors selected for the DOK Co-Pro Market were eligible for the award, which went to the Belarusian filmmaker Daria Yurkevich for her project titled “GENESIS”. This film will portray a married couple who run a horse-farming collective and are doing everything they can to save the last remaining breed of Belarusian horses from extinction and release them into the wild.
In their laudatory speech, jury members Maëlle Guenegues (CAT&Docs) and Carmen L. Vicencio (American Documentary) praised the filmmaker for providing "a glimpse of the harsh realities and challenging conditions that her protagonists – both humans and equines – face." The project conveys "a keener sense of place and environment as well as a quiet, impartial respect for the people who live there."
Christoph Terhechte thanked Barbara Klepsch, Minister of State for Culture and Tourism, Markus Franke and the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism for their commitment to female filmmakers.
This was followed by a screening of “Brother”, a short film made with stop-motion animation which explores the emotional depths of a personal loss. After this, the selection committee and the juries of DOK Leipzig 2023 were introduced.
The opening ceremony concluded with the world premiere of “White Angel – The End of Marinka”, following a discussion with the film’s director, Arndt Ginzel. This film documents evacuation and rescue operations in the small Ukrainian town of Marinka in the Donetsk region between the spring and autumn of 2022. “White Angel – The End of Marinka” will be in cinemas across Germany from 19 October.
DOK Leipzig is screening 225 films and extended reality works from around 60 countries, including 44 world premieres, in eleven different venues until Sunday (15 October). This year, DOK Leipzig is again offering free screenings of some of the films in the East Hall of Leipzig Central Station and at the Polish Institute. From 9 to 15 October, one film per day will be available online for 24 hours throughout Germany in the DOK Stream.
The Golden and Silver Doves and other festival awards will be presented in two award ceremonies on Saturday, 14 October 2023.
DOK Leipzig owes a huge debt of gratitude to a number of long-standing and new partners, sponsors and patrons for their valuable support. Without their crucial support, this major cultural event, which is so vital to the arts, the film industry and the city, would not be possible.
The City of Leipzig, as the proprietor of Leipziger Dok-Filmwochen, supports the festival in a major way. It provides the primary source of funding for DOK Leipzig, as does the Free State of Saxony. Alongside the institutional funding from the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism, the Free State is once again allocating project funds for programmes of inclusion in order to facilitate the participation of everyone interested in film. This measure is co-financed by tax revenue according to the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament.
At the EU level, DOK Leipzig is supported by Creative Europe Media and is involved in two funding programmes which benefit the public festival and DOK Industry. Creative Europe Media also supports the Doc Alliance documentary film festival network, of which DOK Leipzig is a founding member. The Central German Media Fund and the German government’s Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM) provide crucial support to the festival and its events and activities for the film industry. The Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony represents a further source of funding for DOK Leipzig. This measure is co-financed by tax revenue according to the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament. The Goethe-Institut supports the festival with funds from the de⁺ mobil film festival funding in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office. The retrospective at DOK Leipzig is again receiving support through funds from the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany.
A total of 61,250 euros in prize money and non-cash benefits will be awarded at DOK Leipzig this year. Stalwart partners of DOK Leipzig include Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF). Since 2013, MDR has sponsored the 10,000-euro Golden Dove for the International Competition Documentary Film as well as partnership awards for eastern European films.
This year, 3sat will again be sponsoring the Silver Dove in conjunction with 6,000 euros for the best entry by an up-and-coming director in the International Competition Long Film. The broadcaster has been supporting the documentary film scene by being involved in production and offering airtime since 1993. By sponsoring this award for young directors at DOK Leipzig, 3sat is reaffirming its commitment to talented international directors. The Silver Dove Short Film in the amount of 1,500 euros is provided by the Saxon State Institute for Private Broadcasting and New Media (SLM) for the best short documentary by a talented up-and-coming director. As a partner and award sponsor of DOK Leipzig, the SLM not only supports young filmmakers but also stages events to promote critical thinking and media literacy among viewers of all ages. It supports the organisation of the DOK master classes and the DOK Neuland XR event as well as the pedagogical activities of DOK Spotters and DOK Education.
The 1,500-euro Golden Dove Short Film award in the International Competition Animated Film is sponsored by the Deutsches Institut für Animationsfilm e. V. Founded in 1993, the DIAF preserves, researches and presents the legacy of German animated film. Doris Apell-Kölmel and Michael Kölmel are supporting the German Competition Documentary Film with 10,000 euros in prize money for the Golden Dove. The Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst is co-sponsoring the Golden Dove in the audience competition.
Further partners are supporting DOK Leipzig through financial and non-cash contributions and are thus instrumental to its success. The German-French arts and culture channel ARTE is one of the long-standing partners, as is BIG Cinema, whose technical support makes possible the film screenings in the East Hall of Leipzig Central Station. DOK Leipzig enjoys strong visibility around the city thanks to its collaboration with partnering regional printer MaXx Print. Mo Systeme supports the festival’s events through its Modulbox systems, while Die Leipziger (L Gruppe) is generously providing DOK Leipzig with advertising services. Further supporters include SEE NL, German Films and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, which is once again hosting the DOK Neuland exhibition. The Polish Institute is also making its premises available to DOK Leipzig. The Regis-Breitlingen juvenile detention centre is DOK Leipzig’s most unusual venue and is actively involved in presenting an award.
DOK Neuland receives generous support from the Museum für bildende Künste Leipzig as well as from the Saxon State Institute for Private Broadcasting and New Media (SLM), INVR.SPACE, MDR Media, Werkleitz and the Wert collective.
DOK Industry receives support at the European level from Creative Europe Media and at the national level from the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the BKM.
DOK Industry is supported by the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism with an endowment of 5,000 euros for the Saxon Award for the Best Documentary Project by a Female Director. The 2,000-euro Current Time TV Award honours a project from central or eastern Europe at the DOK Co-Pro Market. Unifrance provides support in kind for the Unifrance Doc Award. D-Facto Motion also offers the Works-in-Progress Award, which is endowed with 10,000 euros in kind. The Short Film Agency Hamburg supports the recipients of its award with a letter of intent and know-how as they work towards realising new projects.
The festival further relies on the commitment of a large number of patrons, sponsors and partners who help to make possible everything that is offered here.
DOK Leipzig will be presenting some 225 films and extended reality works from around 60 countries from 8 October to 15 October this year. Opening the festival on 8 October will be the world premiere of White Angel – The End of Marinka, a documentary by Leipzig journalist Arndt Ginzel. As every year, the festival centre is located in the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig.
An overview of the awards, prize sponsors and juries at DOK Leipzig can be found here: Awards & Jurys
All supporters of the festival are listed here: Partners & Sponsors
Three juries comprised of distinguished filmmakers and arts professionals, as well as a jury of audience members, will be presenting awards for short and feature-length animated and documentary films in competition at the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig. The jury members will bring together diverse perspectives on contemporary international documentary and animated filmmaking.
The 2023 jury of the International Competition Documentary Film is comprised of Jennifer Fox, Radu Jude, Marie-Pierre Macia, Steven Markovitz and Rima Mismar. These five jury members will award a Golden Dove to one short film and one feature-length film from among 10 feature-length documentary films and 13 short films that have been nominated. One Silver Dove each will be awarded to one short and one feature-length film by an up-and-coming director.
Since making her directorial debut with “Beirut: The Last Home Movie” (1988), writer, director and producer Jennifer Fox has regularly been honoured with international festival and industry awards for her groundbreaking cinema and television productions. In 2018, she directed her first feature film, “The Tale”. Her fellow jury member Radu Jude, from Romania, has also received numerous prestigious awards for his work as a director, including a Golden Bear at the Berlinale for the social satire “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn” (2021). His most recent film, the comedy “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” (2023), was awarded the Special Jury Prize at Locarno. As director of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes, Marie-Pierre Macia championed the directing debuts of such renowned contemporary filmmakers as Sofia Coppola and Carlos Reygadas. Macia’s impressive filmography as a producer includes “The Turin Horse” (2011) by Béla Tarr and “Mariner of the Mountains” (2021) by Karim Aïnouz. Macia also founded “Crossroads”, the co-production forum at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Steven Markovitz, a co-founder of the production company Big World Cinema (1994) and the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival (1999), has been making an important contribution to African cinema for more than 25 years. He has been producing and distributing feature, documentary and short films by African directors that challenge the predominant image of that continent. Film critic and writer Rima Mismar served on the selection committees of various festivals prior to joining the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) as manager of its film programmes in 2011. Since 2016, she has been the organisation’s director.
This year, the jury of the International Competition Animated Film is comprised of Pavel Horáček, Anne Isensee and Irina Rubina. During the week-long festival, they will view 23 works that have been nominated and will choose the recipient of the new Golden Dove for an animated feature film as well as of the Golden Dove for an animated short film.
Pavel Horáček, a sought-after specialist writer and festival jury member, was programming director of the International Animation Film Festival AniFest in Teplice and has held the same position at IFAF Anifilm, first in Třeboň, now in Liberec, since 2013. Anne Isensee’s films have been a constant at DOK Leipzig for a number of years. The short films by this Berlin-based animator and director of animated films have been screened at international festivals, earning several awards, including a Golden Dove in the German Competition for “Megatrick” in 2017. Since 2021, Isensee has been a board member of AG Animationsfilm, the German branch of ASIFA, the Association internationale du film d’animation. Irina Rubina is an animator as well as a director and producer of animated films. Through her company, iraru.films, she produces and realises short films and music videos as well as hybrid and collaborative projects that explore the boundaries between animation, film, performance, music and dance. She has also been a board member of AG Animationsfilm since 2021.
Films that earn the Golden Dove for a short animated film or either Golden Dove in the International Competition Documentary Film qualify for nomination for the annual Academy Awards, provided they meet the Academy’s requirements.
The jury of the German Competition Documentary Film will award a Golden Dove for a feature-length documentary film and a Golden Dove for a short documentary film. Birgit Kohler, Claus Löser and Serpil Turhan are the jury members who will view and award these nine feature-length and eight short film productions from Germany.
Birgit Kohler is the head of programming at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin. She was a member of the Berlinale Forum selection committee from 2002 to 2019 and as its interim director was responsible for its main programme in 2019. Her curatorial work focuses on contemporary documentary film and various artistic perspectives in international contemporary cinema. The curator, author, filmmaker and musician Claus Löser has been the head of programming at Kino Brotfabrik in Berlin since 1990 and a freelance film critic since 1992. In 1996 he founded the archive Ex.Oriente.Lux to collect and preserve GDR underground film, and published the book “Gegenbilder” (Counter-images). In 2009, Löser curated the Berlinale retrospective “Winter adé”. Serpil Turhan, a visiting professor in the media art/film programme at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe from 2019 to 2023, first acted in films by Thomas Arslan and Rudolf Thome between 1997 and 2005. Later she studied with Thomas Heise and others and graduated in 2013 with the documentary film “Dilim Dönmüyor – Meine Zunge dreht sich nicht” (Dilim Dönmüyor – My Tongue Does Not Turn). Her feature-length documentary “Rudolf Thome – Überall Blumen” (Flowers Everywhere) premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2016. In 2020, her film “KÖY” opened the Duisburger Filmwoche.
Film buffs and long-time festivalgoers once again have the opportunity to be on the jury for the Audience Competition. Billie Bauermeister, Fritz Czaplinski, Anna Eulitz, Charlotte Hennrich and Annegret Weiß will be representing the DOK Leipzig audience as jury members this year. They will award a Golden Dove to one of eight feature-length documentaries that have been nominated.
The Golden and Silver Doves will be presented to the winning films on Saturday, 14 October 2023, at 7 pm at the Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig’s West End.
Overview of all jury members at DOK Leipzig 2023: Awards & Jurys
In this year’s edition, DOK Leipzig is presenting a DOK Industry Talk on Generation Ukraine, a new initiative by the ARTE Group aimed at supporting the Ukrainian filmmaking industry by co-producing 12 documentaries that explore Ukrainian reality in the throes of the ongoing war.
The Talk, held on 10 October at 16:30 – 18:00 CEST, will present the ARTE initiative and showcase six of the projects with the participation of the film teams. The Talk will be moderated by documentary film producer and consultant Heidi Fleisher.
The ARTE Group and its European partners launched the project Generation Ukraine in a concerted effort to bolster the realisation and distribution of the Ukrainian film projects that have been conceived since the beginning of the Russian invasion and are in dire straits documenting the lasting impacts of the war on their country, its collective memory, land, and its people. The kick-off workshop of the Generation Ukraine project took place in Strasbourg in January 2023. From Wednesday, October 11th, a three-day workshop on "Generation Ukraine" will commence at the MDR headquarters in Leipzig.
Following the example of Generation Africa, which gave a platform for young African filmmakers across the continent to tell their stories and reach diverse audiences, ARTE is supporting 12 Ukrainian documentary projects in various stages of development, selected from some 30 high-quality submissions. The selected Ukrainian film projects are financed by the ARTE group (ARTE France, ARTE GEIE and ARTE Germany), through co-productions or pre-sales, and in collaboration with the broadcaster's European partners. Projects completed by autumn 2024 will be included in the ARTE Media Library. All films will be broadcast on ARTE at a later date.
The Generation Ukraine project is one of many ARTE’s recent initiatives championing daring and uncompromising voices from Ukraine. One of them is the web series “Ukraine: The War from Within” where Ukrainian journalists offer “an authentic view of the East from the East.”
The full list of projects participating in "Generation Ukraine" can be found in the PDF file of the press release (see above).
From 9 to 15 October, DOK Leipzig will be presenting a feature-length film every day and a programme of short films on the festival Friday as a stream for the viewing public. The films and the short film reel will each be available in DOK Stream for 24 hours following their premiere at the festival. This is a change from previous years, in which the films went online after the festival week concluded.
Starting things off will be “Vika!” on the festival Monday, following a free screening of that film at Leipzig Central Station the day before. On Tuesday, “Sick Girls” will deal with a diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood – as told from a female perspective. On Wednesday, “Knit’s Island”, a documentary filmed within a video game, will be shown online. “Photophobia” can be seen on Thursday; it’s a film about a 12-year-old who seeks refuge from the Russian war of aggression in an underground station in Kharkiv.
Friday the 13th is devoted to short films, with a mix of six animated and documentary films on the theme of resilience These range from the art of reassuring oneself in the no man’s land of a sterile examination room (“It’s Just a Whole”) to the resilience shown by trees after a forest fire (“Tale of the Three Flames”) to the struggle of a filmmaker in exile who must reinvent herself and her art in a foreign language in order to assert herself (“Smoke of the Fire”). In “A Crab in the Pool”, an escape into the realm of mythical beings becomes a lifeline. In “Where I Live”, the protagonist keeps her head high with resilient optimism as she tells of her decline, which is manifested in her flat inexplicably lowering itself within her building. And in “The Wages of John Pernia”, director Ben Young uses historical images from the Wild West to give untold stories of queer love their belated due.
The two films screened on the final two days of the festival also focus on perseverance. In “For the Time Being”, showing on Saturday, a single mother summons almost superhuman willpower in her struggle to prove the innocence of her jailed African-American husband, and in the animated film “When Adam Changes” (Sunday), a teenager physically deformed by mobbing is ultimately the only one in control of his life.
DOK Stream and its selection of films from the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig will be accessible throughout Germany from 9 to 15 October. After purchasing a ticket, viewers can access each film or the programme of short films from 12:01 am to 11:59 pm on its respective day. Each film can be viewed as video on demand via an embedded video player on the respective film page in the Programme at dok-leipzig.de.
Online ticket sales start at the beginning of October. Tickets cost five euros.
The film selection can be found here: DOK Stream 2023
In Episode 5 of the DOK Industry Podcast, the European Creators’ Lab Head of Studies and creative producer and director Mads Damsbo joins podcast host Weronika Lewandowska in reflecting on the power and promise of generative AI for documentary and XR storytelling in the backdrop of the AI-driven creative revolution.
Following one of the main themes of this year’s DOK Exchange XR programme on AI and its impact on storytelling, this episode delves into the essence of the AI-human creative exchange, and how it can reinvent the art of storytelling. The episode enters the captivating realm of a broader AI-human cooperation from the perspective and practice of Damsbo, the creative technologist behind the groundbreaking film “About a Hero”, written by AI. The film’s production has led to the development of a new tool for filmmakers, Kaspar AI.
In this episode, Damsbo and Lewandowska ultimately take us on a contemplative journey through a remarkable vista of AI as well as new narrative pathways that it offers, transcending the bounds of human imagination with new AI tools. This discussion also leads us to sobering questions that the use of these tools poses and varied concerns that are raised by the creators.
Mads Damsbo is a creative producer and director who has always found himself on the bleeding-edge of the development of new media experiences and powerful narratives that utilise pioneering technology. He is currently producing a number of immersive projects, including most recently the first feature-length film written by AI, “About a Hero”. He is the founder of Makropol and CEO and creative producer at Kaspar AI, a company focused on using AI to co-create AV storytelling. He is Head of Studies at the European Creators’ Lab and is this year’s DOK Exchange XR Conference speaker.
Weronika Lewandowska has been the coordinator of DOK Leipzig’s DOK Exchange XR programme since 2022. She is the co-director, writer, and executive producer of the VR experience “Nightsss”. She has served as a mentor for the Climate Challenge XR project for the European Space Agency/Science Now and as an Expert of the Committee for Innovative Film Projects at the National Film Institute in Poland. She is also a writer of XR climate change games for Guest XR, an international research project on the AI agent for harmony in social XR environments (the Institute of Social Studies at the Warsaw University).
The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective (POC2), with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and MUBI, and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.
Listen to the podcast episode: DOK Industry Podcasts
Many of the films at DOK Leipzig this year are dedicated to often-discussed social and political issues that are repeatedly covered by the media. These include the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, rescues at sea in the Mediterranean, the invisibility of domestic violence, cases of sexual abuse in the church, vestiges of the colonial era, diagnoses of ADHD, abortion and the impact of the war in Ukraine.
In its DOK Talks for the general public, the festival addresses overarching themes and deepens the discussion. The DOK Talk “Sensitivity Screening – Unlearning the Past” considers films that reflect the colonial history of various countries, including Germany, and discusses ways of dealing with colonial images and colonial language without resorting to racist stereotypes.
As part of the DOK Industry programme, the panel discussion “Advancing Anti-Racism and Representation in the (Documentary) Film Industry” adds to this focus the question of what means are available to the film industry to further educate itself in critical thinking about racism, to question existing structures and to actively combat racism. Representatives of various organisations and collectives from the field of anti-racism and diversity in the film industry will present their work and share their achievements, failures and lessons learned. They will be joined by Marion Schmidt (ARTEF Steering Committee), Fatih Abay (Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the European Film Academy), Patricia Redzewsky (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Consultant, member of Schwarze Filmschaffende e.V.) and moderator Seggen Mikael (co-founder of DisCheck).
A further DOK Industry Talk is dedicated to the situation that Belarusian filmmakers are currently facing. The consequences of the Russian war of aggression – for Ukrainians, but also for other countries in central and eastern Europe – are echoed in a number of other films in the programme.
In another public DOK Talk titled “Society, Media, Stereotypes – Who Influences Whom?”, DOK Leipzig will examine various social stereotypes that FLINTA* (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender persons) in particular are confronted with. The discussion will include ways that stereotypes such as those relating to abortion, sexual abuse, femicide and taboos are influenced by images presented by mass media.
The DOK Talk “animation@DOK Leipzig – Challenge Feature-Length Film” will explore the cinematic form of feature-length animated films. How do the creative and production processes differ from those of animated short films? Animation filmmakers talk about motivation, development, artistic freedom, terms of production, and financing.
Six sets of short films offer further thematic perspectives on the programme. They consist of films that concern themselves with the end of a life (short film reel “Is This the End, My Friend?”) or contemplate all the facets of love and partnership (short film reel “ABC of Love”). Others tell of self-empowerment (short film reel “Shout It Out Loud!”), home and displacement (short film reel “Taking Sites”), venture into the realm of myths and ghosts (short film reel “Ghost Stories”) or note what we can learn from the past (short film reel “Back to the Future”).
Overview of DOK Talks and other events at DOK Leipzig: Events
The competition films for the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig have been finalised. The schedule of films is now complete. A total of 71 films, including 35 world premieres, are competing for the Golden and Silver Doves this year.
“Quite a few films made during the pandemic had a personal angle. This year, the films have gone back to looking at broader societal and political themes – partly in order to understand what’s going on at the moment and explore how we can work towards a different future,” festival director Christoph Terhechte observes.
The International Competition Documentary Film includes 10 feature-length films and 13 short films from such countries as Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Serbia, South Korea and Ukraine. The productions include debut films as well as works by established filmmakers. Peter Mettler reflects on life cycles and human existence in “While the Green Grass Grows”. Nikolaus Geyrhalter presents the world premiere of his latest film, “The Standstill”, which observed the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vienna from March 2020 to December 2021. In “The Wages of John Pernia”, Ben Young explores a homosexual love story in the Wild West. “Beauty and the Lawyer” tells the story of a young Armenian family who attempt to assert a queer normality for themselves and others. In “Kumva – Which Comes from Silence”, survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda address their traumatic experiences. And “Where Zebus Speak French” visits a Malagasy village community that is resisting a construction project motivated by capitalist greed.
The International Competition Animated Film features 27 productions from Germany, Canada, Colombia, India, Spain, Taiwan and elsewhere. Five works are competing for the Golden Dove for a feature-length animated film. In the hybrid film “Johnny & Me”, a graphic artist immerses herself in the satirical work of the anti-fascist photomontage artist John Heartfield. “Knit’s Island” also straddles the line between documentary and animated film. In footage shot entirely within an online game, the filmmakers conduct interviews with the other players inside a virtual dystopia. “No Changes Have Taken in Our Life” tells the story of a sousaphone player’s difficulty in finding work in China after graduating from music school. Two different coming-of-age stories are told in “Tender Metalheads” and “When Adam Changes”. While the heavy-metal fans find friendship and refuge through their shared passion for their music, Adam notices how criticism of his appearance actually transforms his body. The feature-length animated film “Sultana’s Dream”, in which a young Spanish woman goes on a journey of discovery to the utopian land of women, will be screened out of competition.
The German Competition Documentary Film includes 8 short and 9 feature-length documentaries, many of which offer new perspectives on subjects that are often discussed in society. “Sick Girls” deals with ADHD in adulthood; its female perspective is quite intentional. Drawing upon her own heritage, Grit Lemke portrays the still vibrant culture of the Sorbs in the film “We Call Her Hanka”. “One Hundred Four” documents a rescue at sea in the Mediterranean in real time. “Home Sweet Home” uncovers a story of domestic violence that is invisible in the idyllic family life captured in old Super 8 footage. Also hidden for a long time are the cases of abuse in a Protestant children’s home, which “The Children of Korntal” recounts. Three films (“Make Up the World”, “Togoland Projections” and “Showhouse”) deal in different ways with Germany’s colonial past and its remnants in the present day.
Eight feature-length documentaries have been nominated for the Audience Competition. Some of these films have already made a name for themselves at major international film festivals; examples include “A Still Small Voice” (Sundance) and “Eat Bitter” (Hot Docs and others). In “Bye Bye Tiberias”, which was screened at the Venice Film Festival, actress Hiam Abbass (“Succession”, “Blade Runner 2049”) takes her daughter back to the Palestinian village she once called home. Other films in the competition tell true crime stories (“The Gullspång Miracle”), face repressed traumas (“The Mother of All Lies” and “My Father, Nour and I”), follow an 84-year-old female DJ (“Vika!”) and look behind the scenes of Italian beach holidays (“Vista Mare”).
The “Camera Lucida – Out of Competition” section groups together five films with strong signature styles that challenge the conventions of cinema. Jim Finn returns to the festival with “The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology”, a humorous, psychedelic montage concerning the impact of the apostle Paul. In “Man in Black”, the composer Wang Xilin, who performs nude, confronts the cruelty of the communist regime in China. “The Tuba Thieves” explores the meaning of sound and hearing; “Feet in Water, Head on Fire” brings together the past and the present in its contemplation of Californian date palms; and in “Play Dead!” Matthew Lancit uses first-person body horror to confront his fear of the consequences of having diabetes.
The film selection can be found in the PDF file of the press release (see above)
"Nowhere Is Only Somewhere" - under this title DOK Neuland invites you to join us again this year at the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig to face the pressing questions of our time with extended reality works. The ten selected works reflect many themes that also characterize this year's documentaries and animated films at the festival. They address war, colonialism and repression, also as patriarchal and heteronormative abuses of power. Many of the works also lead deep into discriminatory and racist narratives that – consciously or unconsciously – are still being reproduced
New storytelling and exciting projects at industry events DOK Exchange and Prototyping Lab
DOK Exchange XR, DOK Leipzig’s exhilarating programme on interactive and immersive storytelling with a focus on XR works, will take place on Festival Friday, 13 October. The DOK Exchange XR programme, consisting of XR Conference and XR Showcase, this year will explore new explosive possibilities that generative AI unlocks for XR and documentary storytelling. The programme will further focus on the use of AI tools and opportunities and risks associated with it, the topic of AI-user generated content in the context of XR prototyping and AR in the development of site-specific documentary storytelling, among other topics.
At XR Conference (13 October at 11:00 – 14:30, online and onsite at Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig), a number of invited speakers will examine various aspects of XR development and new directions for XR storytelling in the context of generative AI. At XR Showcase (invitation only, online), a selection of groundbreaking XR projects in development will be presented in front of an online audience. The presentation, moderated by Brigid O’Shea, will be followed by a session of feedback from some 20 experts across the disciplines. The 2023 XR Showcase project selection will be announced soon.
In collaboration with DOK Leipzig’s DOK Exchange, the European Creators’ Lab is holding its Prototyping Lab on 9 October - 13 October in Leipzig. The 5-day Lab will offer a platform for intensive knowledge exchange, helping producers and creators seeking to propel their immersive projects forward further work on their technical prototypes, and connecting them with creative technologists, digital masters and other talent in immersive production.
The selected works at DOK Neuland can be found in the PDF file of this press release (see above).
DOK Leipzig’s freshly announced DOK Industry programme features a panel that brings renewed attention to exiled Belarusian documentary filmmakers amid the country’s escalating political climate and curbs on (artistic) freedom. The dedicated panel “Displaced by Dictatorship and War: Belarusian Independent Filmmakers in Europe” will be held on Monday, 9 October, at 13:00 at Propsteikirche St. Trinitatis.
The discussion will take place with the participation of the recently launched Belarusian Independent Film Academy (BIFA) and will shed light on the current state of Belarusian independent documentary cinema, address challenges faced by exiled Belarusian documentary filmmakers and those still living and working in the country, and discuss how to support fellow Belarusian colleagues through funding, festivals, and partnerships with European film institutes.
Among the panellists are film producer, director, and programme director of the Belarusian independent film festival Northern Lights Volia Chajkouskaya (who is currently based in Estonia) and German director Juliane Tutein. Chajkouskaya and Tutein will discuss how to film in and about Belarus since the country has been plunged into turmoil in the wake of 2020. Louis Beaudemont (Les Steppes Productions) will further join Chajkouskaya in addressing how to support Belarusian documentary filmmakers in exile. Beaudemont and Alice Syrakvash have co-launched a series of events in a bid to support Belarusian cinema in France and Europe. Chajkouskaya, film director Andrei Kutsila (“When Flowers Are Not Silent”) and film critic, cultural observer, and journalist Irena Kaciałovič will also present the work of BIFA during the panel.
BIFA was launched in February 2022, when filmmakers and other members of the Belarusian film community decided to form an organisation that advocates for independent Belarusian filmmakers, promotes their interests and gives them a platform to speak in a unified voice. Among the founding members of BIFA are Chajkouskaya, film directors Kutsila, Darya Zhuk (“Crystal Swan”) and Aliaksei Paluyan (“Courage”), senior programmer Ihar Sukmanau and film critic Kaciałovič.
The creation of BIFA came as Belarusian filmmakers continue to face hostility and threats to their lives and freedoms as Aliaksandr Lukashenka cracks down on opposition voices and stifles dissent. Many filmmakers and industry professionals, who have been spearheading the resistance, have been forced to flee to Europe and are now in exile. BIFA thus also serves as an alternative to Belarusian state-sponsored film organisations. The organisation was born in the wake of the war in Ukraine, when more than 130 Belarusian filmmakers and industry professionals signed a collective statement denouncing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This year’s Industry Programme features a wide range of events that bolster creative exchange and create a space for filmmakers to connect with other industry professionals, showcase their projects and find potential collaborators. Among the highlights of the Industry Programme is Short n’ Sweet (11 October), the festival’s short film pitch, which will see eight film professionals present their short documentary, animated documentary, animated film and series projects. Following the inaugural edition of DOK Archive Market last year, the second edition will offer opportunities for attending filmmakers to learn about the libraries of exhibiting archives and meet with archive researchers and producers. Find further events in the Industry Programme online.
Find the full programme here: DOK Industry Programme A-Z
All dates and events: DOK Industry Schedule
This year, several programmes at DOK Leipzig are once again focusing on central and eastern European film, which have a strong historical connection to the festival.
DOK Leipzig is giving central and eastern European film a platform in a section titled “Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe”. Many of the films in this section reflect Russia’s influence and the threat of Russian imperialism. The short and feature-length films that are being shown include works from Estonia, Georgia, Croatia, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic, with several world premieres among them. The section includes a portrayal of the courageous and undaunted activists in Belarus (“Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus”) as well of as the opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia prior to the invasion of Ukraine (“The Last Relic”). The backdrop of Tito-era Yugoslavia drives the narrative in a philosophical retrospective (“The Box”) and in Kharkiv, a 12-year-old who experiences the nightmare of wartime from an underground station struggles to find the miracle of hope (“Photophobia”).
Slovenia, the Guest of Honour at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, will be featured in a festival compilation titled “Focus: Post-1991 Slovenian Documentary Films”, which will screen outstanding films made in various years. This programme was developed in cooperation with the Slovenian Cultural Centre and the Slovenian Film Centre and is curated by Simon Popek, programme manager of the Ljubljana International Film Festival.
The short film event “5x5 Shorts from the East” is being presented by DOK Leipzig in cooperation with the European partners Kraków Film Foundation, Czech Film Fund, Slovak Film Institute, Estonian Film Institute and Croatian Audiovisual Centre. These 25 documentary and animated films will be screened free of charge at the Polish Institute on 14 October and can be attended on a “hop on, hop off” basis.
“Doc Alliance Award” will be screening three long and three short documentaries from a competition held by this festival network, to which DOK Leipzig and six other European documentary film festivals belong. Here, too, the focus will be on Central and Eastern Europe.
The film selection of the programmes presented here can be found in the PDF file (see above).
The latest episode of the DOK Industry Podcast takes a deep dive into the richness of animated documentary and the ways it reimagines how to connect audiences to meaningful stories with empathy and imagination.
Filmmakers Carlos Hagerman and Jorge Villalobos (“Home Is Somewhere Else”) and Camrus Johnson and Pedro Piccinini (“Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad)” join the podcast, curated and hosted by María-Christina Villaseñor. The podcast comes as DOK Leipzig works to give greater prominence to animation at the festival. This year, DOK Leipzig is introducing a new award for feature-length animated films and is further expanding its industry activities to the animation sector.
The episode opens up fascinating perspectives on animated documentary film that interrogate the relationship between form and emotional exploration and expression. The filmmakers discuss how animation offers playfulness and freedom in their creative process, expanding and elevating true-to-life storytelling. The filmmakers also address questions of representation on and off screen in animated film, and how animation can reflect the universality of human life, transcending personal stories into stories of experience that are intimate yet relatable by audiences worldwide.
Johnson and Piccinini discuss their award-winning animated short documentary “Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad”, a very personal story of Johnson’s grieving father who has lost his best friend, his little brother, which turns into a beautiful testament to familial bonds and emotional expressivity as well as, at large, into a positive representation of black stories and an exploration of masculinity. The co-directors share insights about their collaborative work, which they see as an artistic exchange between the two creative minds, where animation is used as another layer of feeling over a personal story.
Co-directors of “Home Is Somewhere Else” Hagerman and Villalobos also talk about their collaborative work in the film and how their friendship of over 30 years helped develop the project. “Home Is Somewhere Else” is their first animated feature documentary following their long track record of successful short films and documentary features. Centring their film on the stories of three immigrant families living in fear of separation in the US, the co-directors turned to animation not only as an aesthetic choice to visualise their experiences but also as a way to enrich the narrative with a diversity of subjective truths.
Camrus Johnson is an actor, director and writer. His twice Academy-Award-qualified animated short film “Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad”, which he co-directed with Pedro Piccinini, has won over 20 awards at film festivals around the world. His NAACP Image Award-nominated animated short film “She Dreams at Sunrise” was an Official Selection of Tribeca Film Festival and was included in its “8:46 Films” collection which in response to George Floyd’s death presented stories of Black love and joy.
Pedro Piccinini is a visual artist and animator. In his work, he always seeks to find different ways of telling stories. Before finding his passion in animation, he worked in award-winning editorial designs and illustrations, producing on both digital and physical media, such as paper illustration and stop motion.
Carlos Hagerman is a director and producer. He has produced and (co)directed award-winning documentaries, including “Those Who Remain” (IDA Humanitas Award 2009), “Back to Life”, and “No Place Like Home”. He is the co-founder of Brinca Taller de Animación, alongside Jorge Villalobos and their colleagues.
Jorge Villalobos de la Torre is a writer, director and producer of animated and live-action projects. His animated and fiction short films have picked up over 20 international awards. He is the co-founder of Brinca Taller de Animación. “Home Is Somewhere Else” is his first animated feature documentary, which he co-directed with Carlos Hagerman.
María-Christina Villaseñor is a curator, film programmer and writer. Key focal points of her work are Latinx cinema, animation as filmic and art-installation practice, and a commitment to expanding access to and inclusion in the arts across underrepresented communities. She is the Programming Director for the New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF). Her previous work includes serving as film and media arts curator at the Guggenheim Museum.
The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective (POC2), with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and MUBI, and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.
Listen to the podcast episode: DOK Industry Podcasts
Keeping on with its long tradition of putting animated and documentary films in a dialogue, DOK Leipzig is further expanding its industry activities to the animation sector to boost mutual exchange and promote networking opportunities between documentary and animation film professionals. Interested professionals will have the opportunity to attend several events focusing on animated film, in particular, on Friday of the festival week (13 October).
Festival participants can find a number of dedicated formats in the DOK Industry programme connecting colleagues from the documentary and animation sectors, including Animation Lab DOK Leipzig (launched in cooperation with CEE Animation), an AG Animationsfilm panel, the networking event Animation Meets Doc and a Get Together hosted by AG Animationsfilm, ASIFA Germany, AG Kurzfilm and DIAF.
Events in the public programme include a DOK Talk on feature-length animated films hand-picked from this year's festival programme, the dialogue setting “Animation Perspectives” and the “Animation Night” with Tess Martin. This year, DOK Leipzig is also introducing an International Competition for animated films, awarding a Golden Dove for best animated feature and best animated short film. This comes as part of the festival’s intention to give greater prominence to feature-length animated films.
Tuesday 10 October – Friday 13 October
Animation Lab DOK Leipzig (in collaboration with CEE Animation)
DOK Industry is partnering up with CEE Animation (CEE Animation Forum, the largest industry platform for European animated projects in Central and Eastern European countries) to hold an inaugural animation workshop, Animation Lab DOK Leipzig. Documentary producers, who are developing their first animated documentary of any format (short, series or feature) will participate in the four-day workshop and gain insights into the animation industry as well as production and distribution. The workshop will be led by international experts from the animation industry. Main tutors are Jean-François Le Corre (Vivement-Lundi!, also “Flee”) and multidisciplinary artist Uri Kranot (ANIDOX).
Friday 13 October, 14:00 – 15:30
Panel by AG Animationsfilm: Diversity: Less Talk, More Action!
The AG Animationsfilm panel “Diversity: Less Talk, More Action!” addresses the issue of diversity in animated filmmaking. The panel vocalises the need to move away from tokenism toward genuine change, where diversity is woven into the fabric of animated film as well as its production processes. The panel will spotlight several animated films that are part of this year’s festival selection. The invited guests are individuals who have taken concrete steps to make diversity a reality in their films and in their work. The panellists will discuss the need for action, and how this could be implemented in animated filmmaking.
Friday 13 October at 18:30
Get Together (hosted by AG Animationsfilm, ASIFA Germany, AG Kurzfilm and DIAF)
In addition to dedicated workshops and talks, accredited guests will also have the opportunity to meet their colleagues and make new connections in a relaxed atmosphere at a Get Together, hosted by AG Animationsfilm (the German Animation Association), ASIFA Germany (Association Internationale du Film d'Animation / the International Animated Film Association), AG Kurzfilm (the German Short Film Association) and DIAF (the German Institute for Animated Film). The Get Together will take place on Friday evening, 13 October, at 18:30 at the Festival Centre.
Animation Meets Doc
With Animation Meets Doc, DOK Industry provides ample opportunity for animation filmmakers to meet esteemed members of the documentary community and experts from the field. This format offers animation and documentary film professionals to expand their network and get connected for future projects and collaborations.
“Animation Perspectives”: One workshop, two approaches to art
Artistic perspectives in animated film are presented not only in DOK Leipzig’s competitions, but in its curated sections as well. This year, the multiple award-winning animation artists Anne Isensee and Michelle Brand have been invited to be the focus of the “Animation Perspectives” section, where they will give each other and the audience an in-depth look into their work and their vision. The workshop will further include a virtual excursion into their studios and professional lives and be complemented by a programme of their films.
“In the beginning was the line,” notes curator André Eckardt in regard to these two exceptional artists. “They philosophise while drawing as well as through animation. They formulate outlooks on life and on ways that its surprising twists and predetermined coincidences can be represented in art.”
Michelle Brand’s works revolve around temporality. Working entirely without a script, she composes her films like variations on one of the central themes in her work. Various moments within the flow of time become simultaneous and superimposed in her images. Bodies in a pedestrian area merge with one another for a few moments or fragment into abstract shapes. Brand’s pursuit of the visual arts is evident in many of her films.
Anne Isensee uses a reductive style in her works – mostly drawing black outlines on a white background – thus enabling the viewer to focus on the things she wishes to communicate. Her art is about attitude and self-determination and problems arising on life’s path. No instructions are given on how to live one’s life, but people are encouraged to communicate with one other. Her short film “Megatrick” marked her debut at DOK Leipzig in 2017, earning her a Golden Dove.
“Beyond Animation”: Home as a safe place or a source of danger
“Home – Floor Plan, Elevation & Life” is the title under which the “Beyond Animation” film series will present animated film as the perfect medium for portraying “home” as an elusive place. “Home” is so much more than a place on a map. André Eckardt, who curated this selection of films as well, writes: “Every emotion has a location. Every formative, touching or hurtful experience has a somewhere. This is often, even most of the time, the place called ‘home’.”
To depict this “somewhere”, the artists behind the films in the “Beyond Animation” series use a variety of techniques. These range from digital matte paintings and cross-fading, as employed by Jeremy Blake in his “Winchester” trilogy about the eponymous arms manufacturer’s legendary estate, to stop-motion, as in Joana Silva’s “Lemon Tree”, in which a reconstructed model of a home is altered until a menacing ambiguity is felt. In Marie-Hélène Turcotte’s “The Formation of Clouds”, shimmering strokes of a pen illustrate how a girl gradually outgrows her home without realising it. In “Limits of Vision” by Laura Harrison, the hallucinatory and intoxicating images of a housewife grapple with “home” as an ambiguous place of female self-determination and gleefully comb conventional associations against the grain. “The architecture of ‘home’ is not functional but emotional,” André Eckhardt concludes. “It is built upon imagination, luck and misfortune.”
The entire "Animation Perspectives" and "Beyond Animation" selection of films can be found in the PDF file of the press release (see above)
The 66th edition of the DOK Leipzig film festival will open on 8 October 2023 with the world premiere of Arndt Ginzel’s documentary “White Angel – The End of Marinka”.
This film documents evacuation and rescue operations in the small town of Marinka in the Donetsk region from the spring to the autumn of 2022. The impressive close-up footage of the operations is from a GoPro camera worn by police officers who repeatedly drive around the town in a white van which the civilians call the “White Angel”. In the spring of 2023, Arndt Ginzel and his team returned to Ukraine and spoke with the rescuers and survivors about their traumatic experiences – and about the demise of their home town, which no longer exists.
“The survivors’ testimony speaks of loss, of pain and grief, but also of hopes and dreams,” comments festival director Christoph Terhechte. “More than a film about war, ‘White Angel – The End of Marinka’ is a document of humanity and a longing for peace.”
Leipzig journalist Arndt Ginzel has been producing TV documentaries for German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF for many years. Two weeks prior to the Russian invasion, he travelled to Ukraine to shoot reports for German television about the killing of Ukrainian civilians and the abduction of children from Russian-occupied territories. He was in the country at the time of the invasion and reported from there in the weeks that followed. In 2022, he was awarded Netzwerk Recherche’s Leuchtturm-Preis (Lighthouse Award) for his war reporting from Ukraine.
Ginzel has done investigative journalism in numerous regions affected by war and other crises. In Syria, for example, he uncovered crimes committed by Russia’s Wagner Group. In Croatia, he tracked down a network of arms dealers linked to right-wing extremists of the German political party AfD.
Ginzel became known, among other things, for his research into the “Sachsensumpfaffäre” (Saxony Swamp Affair) which was published in “Der Spiegel” and “Zeit Online” in 2007. For a TV report titled “Spiel im Schatten – Putins unerklärter Krieg gegen den Westen” (Operating in the Shadows – Putin’s Undeclared War on the West), he and Markus Weller received the Bavarian Television Award in 2017. That same year, his report “Putins geheimes Netzwerk – Wie Russland den Westen spaltet” (Putin’s Secret Network – How Russia Divides the West) was nominated for a German Television Award. In 2019, along with Gerald Gerber, he received the Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig for his research in connection with the Pegida demonstrations in Dresden.
DOK Leipzig will hold its opening in CineStar 4 on Sunday, 8 October 2023 at 7 pm. Film director Arndt Ginzel will be there for a film talk.
"White Angel - The End of Marinka" is a co-production of GKD-Journalisten and the German broadcaster ZDF. "ZDF Frontal" is responsible for the editing.
The 19th edition of the DOK Co-Pro Market welcomes 35 documentary projects from 30 countries that will have the opportunity to find international financing and co-production partners. This year has seen an increase in the number of submissions, totalling 316 projects.
The selection features a number of compelling projects that tackle pressing issues of our time. Some projects examine the impact of the raging war in Ukraine, including Halyna Lavrynets’ “Omelko’s House or Guests from Kharkiv”, produced by Alexandra Bratyshchenko and co-produced by Peter Kerekes (both also “Fragile Memory”), Olga Stuga’s “Second Line” (Habilis Productions, also at the Co-Pro Market 2022 with “Kartli”) and Dmytro Hreshko’s “Divia” about the environmental tragedy in the wake of war and man-made violence. Displacement and migration are addressed in several other projects. Sanhah Lee’s “Be My Guest Worker” amplifies stories of migrants that echo from Germany to South Korea, while Tanim Yousuf’s “Ghost Boat” (Bulldog Agenda, also “This Rain Will Never Stop”) lays bare the devastating toll of human trafficking. Ahmet Petek’s “Ben û Sen” (Dryades Films) zeroes in on his family who had found refuge in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır in the 1990s but are again facing difficult choices amid the expropriation of the Ben û Sen neighbourhood. Grzegorz Paprzycki’s “December” (Telemark, also at DOK Preview Training 2022 with “Pianoforte”) portrays a battle between empathy and indifference towards refugees and migrants in December, the month of Christmas and giving.
Three projects expand the genre of true crime, using unique artistic perspectives and intricate storytelling. Tamara Erde’s “Shaina 13 to 15”, produced by Enrica Capra (Tag Film, also the DOK Leipzig Opening Film 2022 “No Dogs or Italians Allowed”) sheds light on the case of Shaïna, an adolescent murdered by her boyfriend at age 15, reconstructing her story in the lead-up to her tragic death. Exploring how crimes have altered their families, Lene Berg’s “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (produced by Ellen Ugelstad) interrogates questions of truth and film, violence and guilt mired in the 1975 arrest of her father Arnljot Berg, a renowned Norwegian film director who was accused of the murder of his wife. Loris G. Nese’s project “Last Time” also reveals his family’s dark past, utilising family archives and animation to revisit his childhood and adolescence marred by the death of his father and the discovery of his criminal life.
Some projects delve into the theme of youth in the context of current realities: Eleftherios Panagiotou’s “Asphaltos”follows two young people seeking a path of emancipation, while Victoria Álvares and Quentin Delaroche’s “PULSE’’charts the struggle of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) to carve out a space in institutional politics, from the perspective of a young female activist. Aygul Bakanova’s project “Overtones (WT)” (if…Productions, also “The Teacher’s Lounge”) follows the life of children in a Kyrgyz music boarding school. This year’s line-up also features a documentary series about youth and cyberbullying, “I Don't Want to Say Goodbye” by Carola Fuentes (La Ventana Cine). The series project is a valued addition to the selection, with DOK Industry’s programme embracing serial content across its formats.
Other projects contemplate the future and conjure up alternative visions of society. Shot on 16mm, “Artificial Clouds” by Josefina Buschmann is a posthuman coming-of-age story that follows an AI’s search for their earthly body. Tristan Ferland Milewski’s “ZOOTOPIA” offers a provoking manifesto for the future, entertaining an idea of a multi-species society (CORSO Film).
Faithful to its commitment to support creative animated documentaries, this year’s Co-Pro Market selection showcases four strong projects: Corine Shawi’s “Just like a Dream”, Alaa Dajani’s “How Many Nights How Many Days?”, Chloe Fairweather’s “Rabbit” and Hsieh Sheng-Hung’s “Wind and View”.
The 19th edition records a prominent international interest in the Co-Pro Market from far beyond the European borders. This October, the Co-Pro Market will welcome directors and producers from the US, three South American countries, six Asian countries and six African countries, including one fixed co-production between Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast, “Djeliya, Memory of Manding” by Boubacar Sangaré (also the 2023 Berlinale Forum title “Or de vie”).
The selection also includes five promising projects that the DOK Industry Team scouted at trusted partner training initiatives and film markets: “War on Women” (East Doc Platform), “Eaglette – A Superstar Erased” (Durban FilmMart), “One Street in Silwan” (CoPro Israel), “Asphaltos” (BDC Discoveries) and “Omelko’s House or Guests from Kharkiv” (DOC LAB POLAND’s DOCS TO START).
Some of the directors and producers invited to this year’s Co-Pro Market have had their films screened at DOK Leipzig in the past or presented previous projects at DOK Industry. Petit à Petit Production (at the Co-Pro Market 2020 with “Paradise”) is returning to DOK Leipzig with the new project “Lisa” in which director Frederik Arens Grandin uses the medium of film to make sense of his mother ending her life and of the world that had become foreign to her. Filmmakers from Leipzig Jonas Eisenschmidt and Constanze Wolpers will introduce their new project “Prison Honey”, a poetic documentary that observes how convicted murderers become beekeepers.
The DOK Co-Pro Market 2023 will take place from 9 to 10 October in Leipzig.
This year, Guevara Namer, an experienced producer, visual artist and documentary filmmaker, joined the DOK Industry Team as coordinator of DOK Co-Pro Market and Short n' Sweet. The Co-Pro Market selection process was further supported by Zeynep Güzel (filmmaker and head of Doc Station at Berlinale Talents) and Wouter Jansen (founder of Square Eyes).
The complete project selection of the 19th DOK Co-Pro Market can be found here: DOK Co-Pro Market
A dachshund loses its life, but is reunited with its grieving friend in an imaginary realm. The daughters of the head of a kung fu school battle not only their opponents, but their stage fright as well. And in “Planet B”, young activists address the urgent question of the possibility of life on a planet that is increasingly being destroyed by humans.
The programmes of films in the Kids DOK section are aimed at five different age groups: 4+, 6+, 8+, 11+ and 14+.
For schoolchildren and teenagers, there is a captivating mixture of documentary and animated films, divided into four age ranges. These are films from young people’s point of view, stories that are on their level and tales from worlds unfamiliar to them.
In addition to its programme of films, DOK Education gives schoolchildren and teachers the opportunity to become familiar with documentary and animated film as a form of cinematic expression. The events range from school screenings of selected festival films to the “DOK Spotters” youth project to “Teachers Day”, a film education workshop for teachers.
The “DOK Spotters” workshop is aimed at young people between the ages of 14 and 20 who are interested in film journalism. Guided by media professionals, they learn techniques of interviewing, photography, and video and audio editing, and publish their reports about the festival on their blog, dok-spotters.de, and in various local media.
“Our aim is to have a discussion about the reasons why the topic of ADHD – in school, but outside of it as well – is increasingly relevant. Is it possible that our efficiency-oriented society is simply weeding out those who go against the grain faster than before? Or are changing lifestyles actually leading to an increase in neural development disorders?" is how Luc-Carolin Ziemann, who is in charge of DOK Education, describes the thematic focus.
To complement this, DOK Leipzig is organising a school screening of “Sick Girls” in late November. Alongside the screening and a discussion of the film, DOK Education is offering a pre- or post-screening module and providing teaching materials. School classes may still register for this.
The entire Kids DOK selection of films can be found in the PDF file of the press release (see above)
An overview about all offers concerning DOK Education you find here.
In the latest episode of the DOK Industry Podcast, filmmaker, activist and co-founder of Re-Present Media Jennifer Crystal Chien joins host Toni Bell in examining the need to generate new and more authentic representations and portrayals of BIPOC communities and expand those stories to other ways of storytelling.
Crystal Chien and Bell discuss some of the challenges faced by BIPOC filmmakers working within the context of the white dominant narrative, and how the white-centring culture continues to affect their work and what films ultimately get made and seen.
This discussion engages the vital question of who is determining what is of interest and to whom. The question of audience (whether the film is compelling enough, or whether it includes enough explanation and context) is an important one because it is often asked from the white dominant perspective, which influences the filmmaking process and limits topics and story arcs deemed acceptable for mainstream storytelling, thus barring some BIPOC filmmakers from accessing funding structures if they do not follow a certain type of mainstream narrative.
The episode also delves into the work of Re-Present Media, which advocates for personal storytelling and its potential to lend nuance to stories from underrepresented communities in the complex cultural landscapes and offer a wider range of topics that are not necessarily focused on a social-issue agenda but represent the fullness of human experience.
Curators of the episode are Toni Bell and Brianna Jovahn. Toni Bell is the creator and host of the What's Up with Docs Podcast and archival researcher (listen to Bell’s previous episodes on archives in Season 2 and Season 3 of the DOK Industry Podcast). She is the Impact Producer for Re-Present Media’s “The Power of Personal Documentary Films” and “A Woman on the Outside.” She is also the Impact Partnerships Strategist for Odyssey Impact.
Guest speaker Jennifer Crystal Chien is a documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Re-Present Media, a grassroots nonprofit that aims to elevate voices from underrepresented communities and humanise media representations of those communities through a focus on personal storytelling.
The podcast is available on the DOK Leipzig website as well as on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Deezer. Part 2 of Bell’s conversation with Crystal Chien will be released soon on the What’s Up with Docs platform.
The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective, with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.
The 66th edition of DOK Leipzig will feature a homage to the distinguished filmmaker Peter Mettler. The films by this Swiss-Canadian director create a space for exploring humanity’s search for meaning and questions about its existence in a captivatingly impartial and reverent way.
The two chapters that Mettler has thus far released of his seven-part cinematic diary “While the Green Grass Grows” earned him the Grand Prix at the 2023 Visions du Réel festival. Drawing upon Mettler’s personal memories and family experiences, the film looks at life cycles and the way the world is constantly changing. “While the Green Grass Grows” will be competing for the Golden Dove in the International Competition Documentary Film at DOK Leipzig. The homage will also include two of his earlier films: “Picture of Light” (1994), in which his team goes in search of the Northern Lights and acquiesces to a state of waiting, and “Gambling, Gods and LSD” (2002), a hypnotic, musical film about people in search of transcendence and ecstasy.
“Peter Mettler is a traveller who is constantly sifting through the layers of time and space and the continuum of the filmmaking process, aware that the significance of human beings on Planet Earth is ultimately of little consequence,” notes Annina Wettstein, the programme’s curator.
In a masterclass, Mettler will provide insight into his unique, process-oriented approach to making all the films screened at the festival as well as the cinematic notebook “Eastern Avenue” (1985). He will also present previously unreleased excerpts of other instalments of “While the Green Grass Grows”.
DOK Leipzig will also be welcoming animated filmmaker Tess Martin. This artist, who was born in the United States, has lived in Italy, Ghana and the UK and is currently living in the Netherlands. Her experience of growing up amid different cultures allows her personal perspective on such themes as belonging, identity, interpersonal issues and historical events to inform her art.
“1976: Search for Life” is an example of this, interweaving memories of her own family with images from the landing of the first NASA probes on Mars. This work, which was originally conceived as an installation, crosses over into fine art, as does “The Whale Story”, a stop-motion animated film in which an actor portraying a diver interacts with a mural depicting a whale.
Martin’s work encompasses numerous explorations of different media and styles, from charcoal drawings to painted glass, to photo cut-outs and pixilation, to Phonotrope animation.
“Many of Tess Martin's films reveal her analogue approach,” says curator and animator Franka Sachse. “She doesn’t conceal or remove the traces of this. They’re ever so slightly palpable – in hand-cut paper, in barely perceptible fingerprints in smudged charcoal, and in the subtle vibration of sequential photographs against a static background.”
During her retrospective at the “Animation Night” on the festival Friday, 13 October, Martin will present a number of her short films, giving a glimpse into the mind and soul of the artist. The first part of the evening will be dedicated to the works she has created over the past ten years as a professional filmmaker, in chronological order. The second part will explore the inspiration for her earlier works and their connection to her current project, which is still in the production stage.
The entire selection of films in the programmes profiled here can be found in the PDF file of the press release (see above).
The second session of the Ex Oriente Film workshop, an esteemed project-based training programme from the Institute of Documentary Film (IDF), will take place for the first time in Germany, in collaboration with DOK Leipzig on 6 - 11 October 2023.
Director of DOK Industry at DOK Leipzig Nadja Tennstedt has expressed enthusiasm for the cooperation with the IDF and commended the quality of projects selected for Ex Oriente: “The Institute of Documentary Film has been a wonderful and trusted partner of DOK Industry for many years. We are continuously impressed by the high quality of projects selected for Ex Oriente. So, it brings us great joy to welcome the talented creative teams of documentary feature films and documentary series along with the knowledgeable and inspiring professionals who will be guiding and mentoring these teams."
This year, a total of 12 creative documentary feature-length films and, for the first time, five documentary series projects are participating in intensive sessions, working closely with a panel of international experts and tutors. Among the tutors of the second session are VP and Executive Producer of Documentaries for HBO Europe Hanka Kastelicová, sales agent Manuela Buono (Slingshot Films), producer Erik Winker (CORSO Film) and documentary film editor and story consultant Yael Bitton. Please find the full list of tutors of the second session here.
During the second session, participating directors will further hone the visual style and narrative of their documentary feature films and series, while producers will develop a detailed financing strategy, dive into various aspects of international co-production and receive valuable guidance in navigating the landscape of European broadcasters. The director-producer teams will also start preparing for the workshop’s final session and gain insights into pitching and marketing.
As a three-module creative lab, the Ex Oriente Film workshop offers a comprehensive support for creative documentary projects in development and early production from Central and Eastern Europe. The third and final session of this year’s workshop will be held during the East Doc Platform in Prague in March 2024, in partnership with the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
Overview of projects participating in the 2023 Ex Oriente Film workshop:
Ex Oriente Documentary Feature Films
Acting Classes - director Sasha Shegai, producers Assel Yerzhanova (FilmFilmFilm) and Yevgeniya Moreva, Kazakhstan
Armenia Phantom - director Tamara Stepanyan, producer Céline Loiseau (TS Productions), France/Armenia
Becoming Roosi - director Margit Lillak, producer Margit Lillak (Tiny Desk Productions), co-producers Dirk Manthey (Dirk Manthey Film) and Hõbe Ilus (Tiny Desk Productions), Estonia/Germany
Birdie - director Aneta Ptak, producer Małgorzata Staroń (Staron Film), Poland
Do Magic - director Vera Lacková, producer Peter Drössler (Golden Girls Film), Austria/Slovakia
How I Became a Hijacker - director Andrew Carter, producer Aleksandra Szczesna, Poland/Germany
Keepers of the Ruins - director Mariia Shevchenko, producer Ella Shtyka (New Kyiv), Poland/Ukraine
Letters - director Andrei Kutsila, producer Sofiia Zadorozhna, Poland/Belarus
Lights - director Mila Teshaieva, producer Marcus Lenz, Germany/Ukraine
Man Under the Ice - director Eva Tomanová, producers Michal Kráčmer (Analog Vision), Veronika Kührová (Analog Vision) and Kenan Aliyev, Czech Republic
The Poor Cry Too - directors Viktorija Mickute and Ieva Balsiunaite, producer Dagne Vildziunaite (Just a Moment), Lithuania/Mexico
What About Little Peter? - director Martin Trabalík, producer Jan Bodnar (GNOMON PRODUCTION S.R.O.), Czech Republic
Ex Oriente Documentary Series
Exit Only - director Timo Novotny, producer Tereza Horská (Hypermarket Film), Czech Republic/Austria
Tito. The West's Favorite Dictator - director Bence Máté, producers Gunnar Dedio (Looks Filmproduktionen GmbH) and Regina Dr. Bouchehri (Looks Filmproduktionen GmbH), Germany/Austria/Croatia/Italy
Unhero or a Falling Star - director Georgi Tenev, producer Martichka Bozhilova (Agitprop Ltd.), Bulgaria
The Murderers of Anna Labancz - director Balázs Dudás, producer Balázs Dudás, Hungary
She Is Not in the Business of Making Friends - director Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan, producers Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan (Manifest Film) and Elena Martin (Manifest Film), Romania
Tutors of the second session:
Ex Oriente Documentary Feature Films
Christian Popp, Iikka Vehkalahti, Filip Remunda, Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová, Yael Bitton, Mikael Opstrup, Erik Winker, Stefan Rull, Manuela Buono, Joanna Solecka, Stefano Savona
Ex Oriente Documentary Series
Ruth Reid, Florian Schewe, Carsten Gutschmidt, Hanka Kastelicová
This year’s DOK Leipzig Retrospective titled “Film and Protest – Popular Uprisings in the Cold War” will explore the past by turning a spotlight on the cinematic testimony to resistance against Soviet regimes – a testimony that existed outside of the propagandistic self-portrayal of those in power. This programme, curated by Katharina Franck (Cinémathèque Leipzig) and Andreas Kötzing (Hannah Arendt Institute Dresden), focuses on films that documented the uprisings in various Eastern Bloc countries as they were happening, while bypassing the censors and defying political persecution.
These uprisings range from the East German protests of 17 June 1953 to the uprising in Budapest in 1956, to the Prague Spring, to the bloody struggles for independence in the Baltic states after 1990. At the same time, the retrospective also takes a look at lesser-known conflicts, including the mass protests in Poznan (1956) and the Polish workers' uprising of December 1970.
“The popular uprisings and quashed attempts at reform are a recurring theme throughout the Cold War period,” Andreas Kötzing points out. “When viewed as a whole, these films demonstrate that the protest movements were an enduring phenomenon in the Eastern Bloc – and that there were a wide variety of ways for filmmakers to portray them in film.”
The contents of the Retrospective range from subversive animated films to footage smuggled into Western countries to unusually candid films that could only be made as a result of a brief relaxation of censorship in Poland. “The courage of the filmmakers who took substantial risks, sometimes even risking their lives, with their covert footage or subversive productions resonates throughout the programme,” comments Katharina Franck. The programme also looks at the Western perspective on these developments in the Eastern Bloc, as reflected in the media at the time.
By staging this Retrospective, DOK Leipzig is also reflecting on its own controversial history. The growing influence of ideological guidelines on its programming meant that until the late 1980s, critical approaches to Soviet regimes were largely absent from the festival. This year’s programme includes some of the films that fell victim to (self-)censorship at the time, such as a Cuban newsreel by Santiago Álvarez (1968), in which Fidel Castro spoke critically of the Soviet invasion of Prague, and Bohdan Kosiński’s film about the “Birth of Solidarity” (1981), which was shown at Western festivals when it came out but was not invited to Leipzig.
The Retrospective at the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig will kick off with three short films from the period of upheaval from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. They will be shown free of charge at the main station on 9 October as part of the Leipzig Festival of Lights.
Two matinees tie in to the theme of the Retrospective. With the film “Woe to the Vanquished – The Workers’ Uprising, 17 June 1953” (1990) by Andrea Ritterbusch in the DEFA Matinee, DOK Leipzig is screening an impressive cinematic recreation of the popular uprising in the GDR which uses original footage from Western archives and interviews with eyewitnesses filmed directly after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The Matinee Saxon State Archive will contribute to this multifaceted topic by reflecting critically on so-called “German-Soviet friendship” and its chequered history, which involved both fraternisation and glorification.
This year, the FilmFestival Cottbus (7–12 November) is also taking up the theme of resistance to communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc. A section titled “What Remains of History” is offering screenings of feature and documentary films on uprisings and opposition in the socialist GDR, Poland and Hungary. The programme includes films by Andrzej Wajda, Márta Mészáros, Andrea Ritterbusch and Volker Schlöndorff.
The Retrospective was produced in cooperation with the Cinémathèque Leipzig and the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies in Dresden.
DOK Leipzig would like to thank the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany, the DEFA Foundation and the Saxon State Archive for their funding and support of the film programmes.
The entire selection of films in the programmes profiled here can be found in the PDF file of the press release (see above).
On the occasion of the annual Leipzig Festival of Lights, which commemorates the climax of the Peaceful Revolution on 9 October 1989, DOK Leipzig will be screening three short films at Leipzig main station at the start of the week-long film festival. These films will also open this year’s Retrospective, titled “Film and Protest – Popular Uprisings in the Cold War”, which will focus on uprisings against the communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc and against Soviet hegemony. The Retrospective will cover the period from 17 June 1953 to the revolutionary upheavals around 1989/90 and will also look at the People’s Republic of Poland, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Hungarian People’s Republic, among others.
The public screening at the Festival of Lights will include three short films made between 1989 and 1991 that document the anxiety and hope felt during this time of upheaval: “Sitis” by Rainer Schade (GDR 1989), “The Wall” by Anatolijs Pjatkins (Latvia 1991) and “Exit” by Małgorzata Bieńkowska-Buehlmann (Poland 1990). The screening at the Leipzig main station (East Hall) on 9 October 2023 starts at 6 pm. Admission is free.
Because of this, the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig will begin one day earlier, on Sunday, 8 October, with the opening ceremony at CineStar. During the week leading up to 15 October, the festival will present about 200 documentaries and animated films in numerous venues across the city. Additionally, each day during the week of the festival, a different film will be available online throughout Germany for 24 hours in the DOK Stream.
Stefan Ibrahim, a graphic designer and illustrator from Leipzig, has created this year’s poster design, which shows a pair of paper scissors. The original scissors that served as the model were found in the festival’s film storeroom. At the festival and online, further types of scissors are waiting to be discovered.
The winners of the Doc Alliance Award 2023 have been announced tonight at the award ceremony of DokuFest in Prizren.
The Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film, endowed with 5,000 EUR, went to “Death of a City“ by João Rosas. The film follows the demolition of an old printing workshop in the center of Lisbon to make way for luxury flats. What starts out as a work-centred film turns out to be an evocative account of the director's relationship with his hometown and the people who build it – a polyphonic narrative made up of their stories of labour and migration, shining a light on the violence and destruction that hide under the progress of our cities.
The jury commended the director “for an intelligently politicised work and its salutary portrayal of the lives of the people therein, an incisive and moving exploration of the face of modern Europe.“
The Doc Alliance Award for Best Short Film, endowed with 3,000 EUR, went to “The Cervix Pass“ by Marie Bottois. In her film, the director refers to the founding of the MLAC (Movement for Abortion and Contraception Freedom) in France in 1973. In the style of militant and feminist films of the time, she documents the insertion of an intrauterine device inside her own body.
The jury praised the film’s “ability to organize a moving and playful coexistence between life and cinema. Marie Bottois combines in a remarkable way political and cinematographic rigor, courage and humor, frontality and delicacy.“
The winning films were selected by a jury of three film professionals with different experience in the industry: Jonathan Ali, a programmer and curator (Locarno Film Festival, Open City Docs, True/False Film Fest, Sheffield DocFest and Third Horizon Film Festival), Anna Berthollet, CEO at Lightdox (sales and distribution) and programmer Arnaud Hée (Bibliothèque publique d’information du Centre Pompidou).
“Disturbed Earth“, a feature-length documentary by Kumjana Novakova and Guillermo Carreras Candi, received a Special Mention by the jury. The film was nominated by DokuFest, this year’s guest festival of Doc Alliance.
“The Cervix Pass“ and “Disturbed Earth” is available on dafilms.com until 31 August along with a selection of nominated short films and Doc Alliance Award winners from previous editions, which have gone on to enduring success in the world of documentary.
The Doc Alliance network of documentary film festivals supports emerging talent in European documentary film. Each of the seven festivals (CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava IDFF, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF and Visions du Réel) as well as a guest festival nominates one short and one feature-length documentary film from its past programme. In addition, each festival in the network shows at least three films from the selection in its next edition.
The network cordially invites European documentary film festivals to apply as guest festival 2024. The guest festival will be part of the network and will participate in the selection of nominations for the Doc Alliance Award. Applications can be sent to barbora [at] dafilms [dot] com (barbora[at]dafilms[dot]com).
Full dafilms programme of Doc Alliance Award winners and nominees: dafilms
All information about the Doc Alliance Awards 2023: Doc Alliance Award
Three years ago, China introduced its controversial “National Security Law” for Hong Kong, severely restricting freedom of the press and freedom of expression. In the latest episode of the DOK Industry Podcast, filmmakers Tze Woon Chan, Kanas Liu and Dr Anson Hoi Shan Mak discuss the impact the law has had on documentary filmmaking in Hong Kong. The episode is hosted and moderated by film curator Karen Cheung.
Given the recent news of content from several short films of the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival was censored by the Office for Film, Newspaper & Article Administration, our guests talk about the 2021 revision of the policy on film censorship in Hong Kong and share their own experience with (self-)censorship.
Another topic is how challenging it is for documentary filmmakers to find people in Hong Kong who are willing to speak openly about their experiences in front of the camera – and to protect these respondents from reprisals. How can an artist’s aim of documenting reality be fulfilled without endangering the protagonists?
The filmmakers also discuss the current difficulty to obtain funding at a national level for making or distributing independent documentaries. Nonetheless, the tightening restrictions are not stopping many filmmakers from documenting life in Hong Kong and the stories of local people, but are instead inspiring them to find creative ways of realising their projects.
Tze Woon Chan is a director and writer from Hong Kong. His first feature-length documentary, “Yellowing” (2016), received awards at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and the Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards. His second film, “Blue Island” (2022), was honoured as best international documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
The filmmaker Kanas Liu has been documenting social movements and protests in Hong Kong since 2014, including the “Umbrella Revolution” and the mass protests against the proposed extradition law in 2019. Her short film “Comrades” was nominated for a Crystal Bear in the Generation Kplus section in 2020.
Dr Anson Hoi Shan Mak is an artist who works with moving images and sound. Her work, which includes single-channel film and video, phonographic sound art and web-based documentaries, has been presented at numerous film festivals, museums and galleries, including in Hong Kong, Busan, Yamagata, Los Angeles, London and Berlin.
Karen Cheung is a film curator and head of communication and marketing at the European Film Academy. In Berlin, she served as a curator at the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival in Berlin (2019) and the festival “Voices of the Ground: Short Film in Chinese Languages” (2021). In 2020 and 2023, she published academic articles on the 2019 Hong Kong protests.
The podcast is available from the DOK Leipzig website as well as from Spotify, Google Podcasts and Deezer.
The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective, with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.
Listen to the podcast episode: DOK Industry Podcasts
The first episode of the new season of the DOK Industry Podcast has just gone online. Filmmakers Sameer Farooq and Marley McDonald join host Aisha Jamal to reflect on the specific role that documentary films can play in the decolonisation of museums.
Sameer Farooq introduces his experimental documentary “The Museum Visits a Therapist” (co-directed by Mirjam Linschooten). This film focuses on the collection in the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam’s prominent museum of ethnography, and asks: What if the museum were to go to a therapist? What might such a trauma-centred therapy session reveal?
Marley McDonald is currently developing a documentary project entitled “The Elephant in the Room” which focuses on American natural history museums. This film, which consists entirely of archival footage, attempts to discern what collections show and hide about their past, present, and future.
In this episode of the podcast, our guests explore such questions as: What does documentary film add to the conversation around art restitution and museum collections? What are the ethical concerns when dealing with archives? How can images, objects or entire collections be further decolonised?
Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. Using a versatile approach involving sculpture, photography, documentary film and anthropological methods, he explores strategies of representation to add to the ways in which museums have investigated the past through collection, interpretation and display.
Marley McDonald is a filmmaker, animator and painter. She was an associate editor on “Spaceship Earth” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” and an additional editor on “Listening to Kenny G”. She completed her first feature film, “Time Bomb Y2K”, for HBO in 2023.
Documentary filmmaker and curator Aisha Jamal is a member of the Programmers of Colour Collective and a curator at the Hot Docs film festival in Canada. She is currently working on her second documentary film about art repatriation and museum culture.
The podcast is available from the DOK Leipzig website as well as from Spotify, Google Podcasts and Deezer.
The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective, with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.
Listen to the podcast episode: DOK Industry Podcasts
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