Last year, we went hybrid – what’s to come this year? We are happy tp share some first insights into our programme with you:

We will return to big screens in the fall! For our 64th edition taking place from 25 to 31 October, we plan to air the complete film programme in selected Leipzig venues, and to celebrate a week of documentary and animated film with our audience on-site in Leipzig.

“This year's film programme is primarily intended to happen in the cinemas. With this, we are promoting a physical fresh start after a cultural dry spell,” festival director Christoph Terhechte says, adding that directors who visit Leipzig will discuss films in person with the audience in the movie theatres.

More to discover online: Welcome to the DOK Stream

After the festival week, our “DOK Stream” will launch online to serve those who wish to either deepen their festival experience or visit DOK Leipzig wholly online. The VoD film programme will feature a selection of festival films accessible to the German public during the first two weeks of November.

“Unlike in 2020, the online and offline film programme will not take place in parallel, because in 2021 we want to give priority to the cinemas. Nevertheless, we will include the best parts of last year’s hybrid offerings, as we assume that not all directors will be able to travel internationally,” Terhechte says. Our audience will once again have the option of viewing recordings of talks and other online formats to whet their appetites for the films.

DOK Industry goes hybrid

Taking the festival’s evolution a step further, the DOK Industry Programme for film professionals as hybrid will combine the best of both worlds, taking place in-person and online in 2021. “With a hybrid offering, we want to facilitate the industry's great desire to meet in person again, while ensuring that everyone can participate regardless of possible travel restrictions or other hurdles,” says Nadja Tennstedt, who took on leadership of DOK Industry's offerings this year.

The industry formats include the DOK Co-Pro Market, the short film pitch DOK Short n' Sweet, the rough-cut presentations DOK Preview, the DOK Film Market, the XR conference DOK Exchange, Meet the Experts, and talks. Partner presentations and podcasts will also be in the mix.

Please read more about our plans for DOK Leipzig 2021 in our Press Release.

The analysis of submissions for DOK Leipzig 2021 has begun! Last week our film experts began the first selection round to decide which cinematic highlights audiences can expect in the upcoming competitions.

Who’s who?

Our 12-member selection committee includes several experts who were already with us last year: Filmmaker Daniel Abma, film and media scholar Borjana Gaković, curator and culture worker Djamila Grandits, film journalist Carolin Weidner, curator and programmer Annina Wettstein, and curator, author and film mediator Luc-Carolin Ziemann. This year we have also welcomed film journalist Anke Leweke to the panel.

Additional members include those from our DOK Leipzig team: Programme coordinators Marie-Thérèse Antony and Lina Dinkla, as well as Marie Kloos, who is responsible for programme research, animation expert André Eckardt, and our festival director Christoph Terhechte.

Did you submit a film by 1 May?

The committee will begin sifting through the films that reached us by our first deadline as of mid-June. Filmmakers will be notified within the month as to whether their work has been selected for DOK Leipzig 2021.

Those who are just finishing up their films can still submit them until 1 July — our second and final submission deadline! The committee will then conduct their last round of selections and set the DOK Leipzig programme. After that, it will be time to plan the screening dates for each film during the festival week.

Our audience will therefore have to remain patient for a little while longer. The complete film programme with all the dates will be released in early October. 

As we prepare for our next festival edition, we are also making some personnel changes.

Ralph Eue, a long-time member of our selection committee and our programmer since 2017, will be devoting himself to new tasks in the future. However, he will continue to contribute to DOK Leipzig as the curator of individual series and programme themes, such as this year's retrospective, which he’ll be putting together with Sylvia Görke.

Festival director Christoph Terhechte will now be supported by film expert Marie Kloos, whom we welcome as a new member of the programme team. She has been on the selection committee since 2020, and this year her duties expand to include traveling to festivals and project presentations (mostly online) to discover new films for DOK Leipzig. Kloos has worked in festival and cinema programming and organisation since 2014, including the Berlinale Forum and the Marrakech International Film Festival.

Another area of the programme team is also gaining a new team member: Marie-Thérèse Antony is our new programme coordinator for the competitions, and will thus be attending numerous festivals (online) as well. Antony previously worked in artist relations for German, French and American institutions, and most recently in festival organisation for German Films and the European Film Market at the Berlinale.

We heartily welcome all the new faces! We are also excited about our selection committee, which has already begun its work. In addition to DOK team members Marie-Thérèse Antony, Lina Dinkla, Marie Kloos and Christoph Terhechte, this year’s committee includes: Daniel Abma, André Eckardt, Borjana Gaković, Djamila Grandits, Anke Leweke, Carolin Weidner, Annina Wettstein and Luc-Carolin Ziemann.

We will announce more news on the selection committee soon.

Starting this month, Nadja Tennstedt will be in charge of DOK Leipzig’s industry offerings. She succeeds long-time head Brigid O’Shea.

Active in the film sector for many years, Tennstedt has focused increasingly on documentary and independent film. Most recently she coordinated DocSalon, the documentary film platform at the Berlinale’s European Film Market (EFM), where she led networking and community building activities within the documentary industry.

“We are fortunate to welcome Nadja Tennstedt to our team, an experienced collaborator who is highly regarded by documentary creatives around the world, and who has earned her reputation through passion, imagination and her dedicated advocacy for diversity,” festival director Christoph Terhechte says.

“Changes in the international film industry, which have been greatly accelerated by the pandemic, pose great challenges to the entire documentary community. At the same time, they present opportunities to rethink and change existing models and structures. I am very much looking forward to accompanying and promoting these developments alongside Christoph Terhechte and all of my colleagues to support the doc community. My goal is to constantly develop DOK Industry’s offerings and adapt them to changes in the financing, production and distribution of documentaries,” Tennstedt says, and she adds: “Particularly important to me in my work is a focus on the participation by creatives from underrepresented groups and challenging power structures that exist in the documentary industry.”

We are happy to welcome you as a new member to our DOK team, Nadja!

Read more in our Press Release.

Further information about this year’s DOK Industry programme will be announced soon.