Anxious in Beirut is a personal diary that documents the events of the last two years in Lebanon – revolution, post-war, explosions, demonstrations. Living with constant anxiety, Zakaria, the film’s young director, narrates his own life while trying, on numerous occasions, to leave his country.
A box of film material from Tito-era Yugoslavia becomes a narrative engine. With dry wit and philosophical verve, this essay burrows through family and contemporary history.
The sixties and the seventies of the 20th century in our former country, a country that ceased to be. A young family moves from a rural environment to a small Slovenian town, where factories are being built and the need for a workforce is increasing. The brothers are growing up in that shaky but magical in-between, soaked in the everyday rhythms of the community, infused with the ideology of the time. Then, it happens: the sudden spectrum of film; the mystique of time itself.
22 years after they established the women's organisation Machsom Watch, its founders reveal what really happened at the checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank.
22 years after they established the women's organisation Machsom Watch, its founders reveal what really happened at the checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank between 2002 and 2012. This is the story of a group of courageous women who dedicated their lives to safeguarding human rights and peace.
The film is built on 9 short stories of the women who participate in the film. Each one of them is adding a personal view of the daily routine of the checkpoint that together crate a very powerful and moving document.
A man on an e-scooter on the outskirts of the city. Only the rifle over his shoulder irritates. The mood of high alert is deceptive. The disaster has already happened.
Deserters is a film about a generation of Bosnian youth from the city of Mostar swept by the devastating war at the brink of their maturity and the tough decision to escape from it.
Deserters is a film about a generation of Bosnian youth from the city of Mostar swept by the devastating war at the brink of their maturity and the tough decision to escape from it. Their exile stories from the 90s, contained in letters mailed to the director of this film from refugee camps scattered across Europe, are confronted with the present condition of the city they were forced to leave. A film about a missing generation, exile, hard choices, and the answer to the most difficult question of any war: to stay or to run?
Srećko, Mirza and Mejra are survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Their fates are revealed in the contrast between innocent everyday moments today and archive images from that period.
The rescue of 104 castaways in the Mediterranean, person by person, step by step, in a real time documentary. Help against the clock – and the organised ignorance of the authorities.
How a sea rescue happens is beyond imagination. The documentary One Hundred and Four brings this dramatic situation closer through the rescuers' perspective.
Shortly after the distress call, several cameras accompany different situations simultaneously. Different angles offer the possibility to set a unique focus on the actions taking place in parallel. The uncut real-time documentary begins during the search for the dinghy ahead of the refugee boat and ends with the successful rescue. The situation comes to a head with the appearance of the Libyan Coast Guard and the political situation leaves the crew and the rescued people in distress for several days, as no Mediterranean country allows them to come to shore. Only after several days and an approaching thunderstorm, is a European port reached.
Golden Dove Feature-Length Film, Film Prize Leipziger Ring, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, German Competition Documentary Film, DOK Leipzig, Germany (2023)
Emile Zuckerkandl talks about his grandmother's salon, Hitler's arrival, and his escape to Algeria. A network of personal memories interwoven with world history.
Emile Zuckerkandl jotted down in his diary, “I write it down, so that I can remember it later.” Eighty years later, his memories are vivid and clear when he talks about his grandmother's salon, Hitler's arrival after the “Anschluss,” and his escape to Algeria. Rainer Frimmel stays very close to his charismatic protagonist in recording a network of personal memories interwoven with world history.
How does the omnipresence of war affect life? The film looks for answers in the “American Way” of everyday life in the vast deserts of Utah, where the U.S. Army are testing new weapons systems.
In the middle of the barren Utah desert, is the Dugway Proving Grounds – a top-secret military testing facility. Bound to this place are the lives of a soldier, a military chaplain, a father searching for his missing son, and a survivor of the atomic bomb. Their fates and fortunes reveal a country scarred by war.
A Grave on the Border is an intimate account of war and flight by Syrian refugee Rose Alkhaled. Filmed in a small town in Germany, this atmospheric short immerses the viewer in the world of Rose's memories that surface at night. Rose tells her story through emotive sculptures made out of newspaper and performances of her poetry. Quiet night-time scenes are forcefully disrupted by Rose's nightmares as they burst to the surface of her mind. The film is underscored by a compelling clarinet composition. While Rose's story is deeply personal, this film also tells the story of millions of women who were forced to flee their homeland.
Director Maren Hahnfeld's films North of Eden and Winter in Eden were screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in Michigan, editor Alex Barratt's feature London Symphony was nominated for Best British Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and All the Colours of the World by composers Shrubshall and Kett was screened at the 2023 Berlinale.
A group of friends leave Moscow after the Russian attack on Ukraine. They find a temporary exile on a Turkish island. Intelligent reflections on home and belonging.
After the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a group of friends decide to leave Russia and settle on an island in the Marmara sea near Istanbul. The film, starting at this point as a kind of travelogue, gradually evolves into a meditation on home and exile.
The term “Horror Vacui”, or the fear of empty space, is used as a metaphor of the fear of the uncertain future that causes feelings of anxiety and loneliness.
The term “Horror Vacui”, or the fear of empty space, is used as a metaphor for the fear of the uncertain future that causes feelings of anxiety and loneliness. With its one-take sequences and free-associative editing style this meditative film sends out a warning of the growing hyper-militarisation of the world we live in, and what it causes to the human psyche. Due to the space and time of the events taking place in the film being blurred, it can all happen everywhere at any time in this globalised world.
Amid the dunes of the Sahara, a Jaima, the traditional Saharawi tent. A woman, through the
tea ritual, takes us into the past and present of her people, persecuted and driven out of their
land. She offers us three teas: the first, bitter as life; the second, sweet as love; the third,
mild as death. The light of the desert is reflected on the Saharawi people, their life made up
of essentials and their struggle to endure.
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda has traumatised generations. The children of the time lack memories, their parents are struggling to speak about it to this day. In this film they break the silence.
They were children at the time of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994. They are now in their thirties and struggling with childhood memories of desolation and violence. To carry the weight of the past and think of a future, we must be able to talk freely. Kumva is about the need to build one's own memory in order to give flesh to the dead and to build a bridge between the past and the present.
Leipzig, 1989. A young punk, detained in a mental hospital, longs to be close to her boyfriend. A doomed love story in the midst of the collapse of the GDR.
Leipzig, 1989. Margarethe, a young punk opposed to the East German regime, is detained in a psychiatric hospital. She dreams of breaking out to join the man she loves – a punk musician named Heinrich. Though the regime's days may well be numbered, the Stasi informants are more present than ever.
When the war starts, 12-year-old Niki finds refuge in a Kharkiv underground station. Monotonous, oppressive days – until Vika enters his life. The tender connection gives new courage.
On a cold February morning, 12-year-old Niki and his family arrive at the Kharkiv metro station to take shelter from the terrifying war raging outside. For Niki's family, daylight is synonymous with mortal danger, and the boy is not allowed to leave the station premises, living under the constant glow of their neon lights. While aimlessly wandering around the abandoned cars and full platforms, Niki meets Vika (11), and a new world opens up to him. As their bond strengthens, the children find the courage once again to feel the sun on their faces.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.