Dear filmmakers, audience members and culture lovers,

At the moment we assume that DOK Leipzig will take place in 2020. While we continue to work on the festival programme, we are of course keeping a close eye on the coronavirus situation, and we will inform you of any news about the festival as soon as possible.

The call for entries for our 63rd festival edition is currently open. Filmmakers and creative people, send us your work — it’s a source of hope and inspiration. We firmly believe that creative exchange and the promotion of film must continue, even in these challenging times, and we want to make our contribution to this as a festival.

At the same time, we want to express our deep solidarity with all of festivals that cannot be held in their usual form at the moment due to the spread of the coronavirus. We want to enter into an open exchange about how to support cultural endeavors at this time. The AG Filmfestival assocation, of which we are a member, has issued a statement on the situation for festivals. Read the text here (in German).

The majority of our staff is currently working from home, but you can still contact us by phone or email and we will be happy to answer your questions about DOK Leipzig.

We wish you all strength, steady nerves and good health!

Your DOK Leipzig Team

A number of our festival films are currently circulating around the internet that are not to be missed. A handful of them are also available in English, like Toomas Beneath the Valley of the Wild Wolves, an animation about a sexy wolf (oh, yes!) who loses his job and becomes a gigolo to support his family.

Also check out the documentary All Creatures welcome about people who meet at camps and international conventions under the umbrella of Europe’s biggest hacker association, the Chaos Computer Club.

And there is so much more to discover. Have a look at our DOK 365 page for all the most current listings. This way to DOK 365

A fresh wind is blowing through our film programme this year. We are pleased to announce a number of new competitions and awards for the upcoming DOK Leipzig 2020.

Fans of animated film will have something special to look forward to: A competition dedicated for the first time to feature-length works in the genre. “In recent years there have been outstanding artistic animated films that would be a good fit for DOK Leipzig and have the potential to meet an enthusiastic audience here,” festival director Christoph Terhechte says. This section will also award a Golden Dove at the festival’s conclusion.

We are also expanding our International Competition for long films. From now on, this will be our platform for both young filmmakers as well as established directors. The previous Next Masters competitions will merge here with the international competitions for long and short films.

The extensive International Programme and the Late Harvest section will also be combined into one Audience Competition, introducing two new Audience Awards for short and long films.

Film Programme will be streamlined

Meanwhile, the film programme will be streamlined to feature around 200 works, down from the more than 300 films shown during previous festival editions.

“We aim to maintain the festival’s high-quality standards, while continuing to explore new cinematic forms and ensuring an abundant selection for the audience,” Terhechte says. “At the same time, we don’t want to overwhelm audiences with a bursting programme. Instead we’re presenting clearly defined sections so the public can make more targeted choices.”

Read more about our new competitions and awards in our press release.

Thanks to our series in cooperation with the historic Schauburg movie theatre, Leipzig’s documentary film fans can now get their fix between festivals. On the last Wednesday of every month we’ll be showing highlights from years past, starting on 29.01 at 8 pm with the 2019 crowd favorite Coal Country Song. Gundermann.

With the help of unpublished archive footage and the artist’s songs, director Grit Lemke profiles the late East German musician Gerhard Gundermann. This film for our times explores how the witty excavator operator grappled with the consequences of open-cast mining and the issues of environmental protection and individual responsibility.

The series continues on 26.02 with Daniel Abma’s Autobahn. In this loving and humorous film, Abma documents day to day life in the German town of Bad Oeynhausen, where the thousands of lorries that drive through each day threaten to strip the community of its spa resort status. But the promise of a new motorway bypass could be the solution.

In March we’re featuring Narges Kalhor’s In the Name of Scheherazade or the first beergarden of Teheran. Deutsche Welle journalist Jochen Kürten saw the film during the 2019 festival and called it “a clever meditation on filmmaking, a profound examination of the concepts of homeland and foreigners, a thoughtful film about prejudice and cultural ignorance, but above all a funny film about all these phenomena together.”

We’ll keep you informed about more films to come.

See you at Schauburg!