In Animation Perspectives the media artists Patrick Buhr and Aaron Jablonski exchange ideas about their animated miniatures in a virtual setting.

With handdrawn lines, animated in 3D, Patrick Buhr strolls through the borderland between staging and real life. Aaron Jablonski expands reality with digital masks and reshapes landscapes through data manipulation. A perfect match for our dialogue series with films, talks and insights into their practice.

Accessible and free for everyone, the Online Exclusive event will take place on Thursday, 29. October at 20:00 on Zoom. The link will be made available here during the festival week and you can browse through the films in this section in our programme.

The competitions this year include more than 70 current films. To make it easier for you to get an overview, we have provided thematic search fields to find your favourites.

Follow the paths of love (or its absence) in Avalon, A Lonely City, Faith and Branko or Joy; observe family ties with 80,000 Schnitzel, It's All the Salt's Fault, Forgotten Lands or Bad Mood; and question sense and being with The Guardian, Me or Between Me and the World / Cleaning Up. Find out which films take a closer look at the state of the world and which focus on “Heeme„ (or “home„ in the central German dialect).

With our programme you can easily filter titles by this year's topics.

If you have any questions regarding ticket sales, the festival cinema schedule or video streaming, please take a look at our FAQ on the Hybrid Festival, where we have compiled answers to the most frequently asked questions.

During the festival week, selected films from the programme will be shown from Monday to Saturday in the East Hall of the ECE Promenaden Hauptbahnhof main station. Due to the hygiene rules, the screenings do not have their usual open character, instead the area is separated by walls and access is only possible after submitting a contact form. The number of seats is limited, please also note the instructions on site. We are nevertheless excited to welcome you!

From Tuesday between 18 and 18:45, we present Genius Loci – Train Stations, Films and Progress together with the Saxon State Archive: humorous and historical films on the theme of railroads, stations and dining cars - as part of the Year of Saxon Industrial Culture, funded by the Cultural Heritage Foundation of the Free State of Saxony.

Monday, 26/10 from 20:00
From the International Competition Girls/Museum by Shelly Silver will be shown. Young visitors aged between seven and nineteen contemplate individual works in the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts and offer spontaneous interpretations.

Tuesday, 27/10 from 20:00
The film 80.000 Schnitzel by Hannah Schweier will be screened. From the German Competition the film is about Monika, who fights tirelessly to preserve her grandmother’s ailing inn and farm. A family chronicle and a film about life goals.

Wednesday, 28/10 from 20:00
As MDR Showcase the film Collective by Alexander Nanau will be shown. In 2015 a fire breaks out in the Bucharest club “Colectiv”: 27 dead, 180 injured. But for the survivors of the disaster, the hospitals become death traps. Investigative.

Thursday, 29/10 from 20:00
Atomkraft Forever by Carsten Rau: Featured in the German Competition, this film is a visually stunning and at the same time sober reckoning of the zero sum game between climate change and nuclear disaster: no dramatisation at all and yet deeply disturbing.

Friday, 30/10 from 20:00
Andreas Voigt is invited to the festival with his film Grenzland, also in the German Competition. Along the river Oder: Virulent questions about homeland and community, everyday life and politics, asked with confident casualness, provide an account of the present.

Saturday, 31/10 from 20:00
Wir wollten alle Fiesen killen by Bettina Ellerkamp and Jörg Heitmann is a real-life satire about the incredible acquisition and impossible sale of a bunker mountain – a mixture of serious documentary and bone-dry humorous science fiction.

In eleven days, DOK Leipzig 2020 will begin – in cinemas, via livestream and on demand. 
But how does it all work? And what happens where? 

During the festival week from 26 October to 1 November, all films will be screened in selected Leipzig venues, where current hygiene and physical distancing rules apply. Free film screenings will be presented every evening at the main station. The extended reality exhibition DOK Neuland will also take place at the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig once again. And you will find individual works in several cinemas across the city.

But this year we also have a new motto: “Watch DOK wherever you want!” With our video-on-demand streaming partner culturebase.org, viewers can access our films online for 48 hours and watch whenever and wherever they like. Some selected films in the programme are also available in barrier-free versions! Details can be found here. Each film is available online for 14 days throughout Germany as of the day after its premiere. That adds up to three weeks of DOK Leipzig films!

You can already browse our film programme, advance ticket sales begin 20 October. Since we’ll be unable to meet the filmmakers in the cinemas, we looked for other ways to foster dialogue by asking them what was on their minds. The result is our new Director’s Short Cuts.

For the cinema premieres of feature films in the International Competition, we’re piping in the filmmakers via livestream for discussions, which at-home viewers can watch as well. Additionally, we’re inviting viewers to live Zoom events for moderated discussions with filmmakers, our Master Class with Annik Leroy and the Animation Perspectives format. All of these are our Online Exclusives.

Zoom is our platform this year for coming together, which includes all our DOK Industry events for film sector networking. Those who are accredited to participate in completely online industry programme will have access to a myDOK account that provides a customisable calendar, tips for navigation, and exclusive access to all content and events.

See you soon at the cinema and on the Web!  

Should any questions arise, we have you covered with our FAQ. Happy scrolling!