The festival week is approaching fast and you can already look forward to seeing ten film programmes in Leipzig’s cinemas. Once again, we are placing greater emphasis on film history with the showing of a comprehensive „Retrospective” that had to be postponed last year.

The “Homage” section of this year’s edition is dedicated to renowned Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi, who also has a family connection to the city. Mograbi's mother fled from Leipzig to Palestine as a child to escape the Nazis. We will also realise the “DEFA Matinee” honouring Kurt Tetzlaff by showing a double feature of his last two DEFA productions. In the “Animation Perspective“ series the two Video and photo artists Claudia Larcher and Randa Maroufi will enter an artistic dialogue with their works.

Meanwhile, the programme “Modular & Modified: Animation and Musique concrète” will explore the interfaces between animation art and music history, and the “Kids DOK” series once again offers exciting discoveries for children and young people.

You can find complete film selection of these sections here.

With their strong artistic visions and personal stories, we are looking forward to highlighting 35 new projects at the 17th DOK Co-Pro Market! From 25 to 29 October they will meet potential co-production, financing and distribution partners.

The DOK Co-Pro Market 2021 is planned as a hybrid event with individual meetings and networking opportunities taking place in Leipzig as well as online.

Check out more here! Happy browsing and congratulations to the teams.

Producers interested in making meetings with the selected projects can still register their interest until September 27. 

The Stiftung Friedliche Revolution (Foundation of the Peaceful Revolution) will award its tenth “Leipziger Ring” prize at this year’s edition of DOK Leipzig. The award honours an artistic documentary film about democracy, human rights and commitment to civil society. It also often highlights the achievements of filmmakers who have courageously made their films with great personal commitment in the face of opposition and restrictions on free speech and the media.

The "Leipziger Ring" film prize has been awarded annually since 2010 at the festival, and includes prize money of 2,500 euros. In 2016 and 2020, however, the award had to be suspended. The last winner of the award was Girls of Paadhai by Natalia Preston in 2019.

Award ceremony at the Regina-Palast

"We are extremely pleased that the ‘Leipziger Ring’ film award can be continued with the 64th festival edition," festival director Christoph Terhechte said. "With this year's festival, DOK Leipzig returns to the cinemas, and thus to human encounters, exchange and discussion about films and life experiences. The festival sees itself as a piece of lived democracy and therefore also a fitting partner to the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution."

A jury appointed by the foundation's board of directors will choose the winning film from among a selection of nominations by DOK Leipzig. The "Leipziger Ring" prize will be presented at the festival's partner awards ceremony on 30 October at the Regina-Palast.

Read more in our press release.

Lights off and … Showtime! In less than two months we’ll start into our 64th festival edition and we are full of anticipation to flip the switch and let DOK Leipzig 2021 begin.

First of all, we are happy to present this year’s poster design that you can discover all around Leipzig very soon. More DOK Leipzig news will follow during the next weeks, the complete festival programme will be online on 7 October.

Save the date

We really look forward to welcoming you in Leipzig’s movie theaters and celebrate one week of cinematic gems and inspiring encounters with you from 25 to 31 October.

Right after this week, we’ll extend the festival online and present a selection of this year’s festival films in our DOK Stream that will be available from 1 to 14 November throughout Germany.

If you don’t want to miss any updates on the festival programme, sign up to our Newsletter or follow us on Facebook, Twitter und Instagram.

See you at DOK Leipzig 2021!