In a cabin in the forest, Jean and Mana listen to various animal species and catalogue voice recordings. When they hear unfamiliar sounds, their curiosity to uncover a secret is aroused.
Jean lives as a hermit in a forest. From his cabin, he listens to and records the sounds of the animals that inhabit the surrounding area. One night, he hears the cry of an unknown animal. Along with Mana, a young girl who sings with the birds, he goes in search of the mysterious creature.
A bicycle accident causes a crack in the protective shell Alice has grown to be able to bear the oppressive confinement of her daily life. Can she finally dance her way out?
Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to dwell on her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life. After a psychedelic party on a factory roof, she has a serious drunken bike accident. Will this give her the courage to become an adult?
Far from the sea, a theater engineer builds a fully functional steampunk submarine with his friends. While escaping social reality, he questions the meaningfulness of our actions.
Theatre engineer Elias builds a fully functional steampunk submarine with his friends. While Nico rescues people from the waves of the Mediterranean, the 70-year-old artist Jim advises: “Don't do it. Don't fix cars. Rather, build something you really want to.” Elias asks himself: Is there a decision to be made between self-realisation and selfless action? On what does responsibility towards individuals or a larger society depend?
About Water and Dreams is a philosophical journey that questions the meaningfulness of our actions and dares to dream publicly in our dreamless society.
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.
Rodica (40) and her children, Maria (14) and Patrick (18), struggle to find each other's coordinates in order to have a balanced family life. Blue is a film about love, fear, anxiety, and the emotions that emerge at their intersection.
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.
Together, Zoe and her little brother manage to leave their fantasy worlds behind and stick a healing plaster on the wound left by the loss of their mother.
In a run-down neighbourhood, Zoe and her little brother Theo are left to fend for themselves. A young adolescent, Zoe is a ball of anger haunted by an intimate terror. Theo, still a child, flees reality into a fantastical world. During a scorching summer day, the two children will have to burst the abscess of their relationship so as not to lose each other.
Frieda, Viola and Jilou are three of the most successful women in the male-dominated breakdance world. At different points in their careers, each of them faces serious challenges.
Who says that women can't break dance? Frieda, Viola and Jilou are three of the most successful women in the male-dominated breaking world. The movie shows their tough training methods, their dance performances at international battles and their personal backgrounds that drive them to fulfil their dreams. The three friends are at different points in their sports careers and thus face new challenges and decisions that will change their lives.
B-girl Jilou is at the height of her career and counts as one of the best in the world. With her extraordinary determination, she is currently winning one battle after the other, whereas Frieda is still grappling with an injury. As a B-girl ever since the emergence of break dancing, she has to come to terms with the fact that her advancing age means she can no longer rely on her body and has to find a life outside of her professional sports career. B-girl Viola is focused on becoming recognised as a dancer and combines breaking with modern dance. For her, every battle is equally a fight for her identity as an artist.
Dancing Heartbeats is an inspiring portrait of courage, endurance, the power of one's passion, and what it means to be a young woman who is fighting for acknowledgement and equal rights.
One day the dachshund lady Dede dies. The little boy mourns her and doesn’t know how to deal with this feeling. In the end he discovers that Dede is dead, but not completely gone.
How does one deal with the unexpected death of a loved one? This film tells the story of a boy and his dog Dede, and shows their final moments together before Dede dies (...and after).
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)
Vasyl is a former ski jumper who now works as a coach at the ski jumping school for children in the Carpathians. He is a loner, and sports is his whole life. Zhenya is Vasyl's favourite trainee. In the last 5 years, he spends a lot of energy making her a champion. With her success, his dreams can come true. When the girl grows up, she decides to try in another area of life not connected to sports. Vasyl's work seems to no longer make sense. But he finds the strength to start all over again.
Els is in her late forties, divorced and in love again. For her, falling in love was not easy: it meant that she had to accept, that she has a life even if her twenty-year-old daughter wants to die and has already asked for psychiatric euthanasia which her mother can do nothing about. In the storm of her own emotions, mixed with guilt, anger, fear and hope, love is what teaches Els to try stepping forward even if it seems impossible.
Falling is a lyrical, found-footage-based testimony from a mother who faces not only the taboos surrounding motherhood but also the most difficult situation in her life.
For years, Michelle has been trying to prove her imprisoned husband’s innocence. A documentary thriller about a tireless struggle against the U.S. American justice system.
When Michelle married her long-time friend Jermaine on the bleak visiting floor of a maximum-security prison, she hoped they would soon share a life in freedom. Jermaine claims to be wrongfully convicted. He is serving a sentence of 22 years to life at the notorious Sing Sing prison near New York City. For years, Michelle has fought tirelessly to prove his innocence while also caring for her teenage children, Paul and Kaylea, as a single mother. In a gruelling routine of short phone calls, letter-writing and brief visits to the correctional facility, she dreams of an idyllic family life outside of the prison walls. As Paul and Kaylea are about to start their own lives, Michelle's quest becomes increasingly urgent. Then, a new piece of evidence is discovered in Jermaine's legal case, raising her hopes for his immediate release. Almost a decade in the making, For the Time Being is an intimate exploration of female resilience and a timely look at the far-reaching consequences of the ailing U.S. justice system.
Girls' stories, teenage days. Seemingly nothing happens, and so much changes. Jagoda and Zuzia are friends from the neighbourhood. They meet at the local square. Sometimes they go for ice cream or to the playground. And they always have a lot to talk about. Being a girl is a special experience, and they are just entering puberty. Biology, hormones, pimples, first rebellion, first love. The first period – when will it come? Will there be anything else? Adults can't always give support or answers. And the girls see more and more. School absurdities, unwanted rules, and dilemmas to be solved. Jagoda and Zuzia are great commentators: contradictory, ironic, independent, and scared. With a great appetite for life! They introduce us to the “girlish” world that every woman remembers and any boy, who watches the film, will finally be able to discover.
5 Moroccan boys live in a cave at the lighthouse in Melilla and dream of Europe. Away from their mothers, longing for one ship that will transfer them illegally to a better life.
The Moroccan boys Imad (15), Nourdine (17), Walid (18), Hamza (17) and Aziz (20) live in a cave under the lighthouse in Melilla. Every night they break into the harbour trying to climb onto the ships leaving for the Spanish mainland. In the shadow of the rocks, they and a hundred other kids have created their own micro-society: “Lord of the Flies” in reality – with their own hierarchies, chants and rules. To pass the time, they phone their mothers on video or film themselves being chased by the police. The film follows the gang of boys for 5 years. From their life in the caves to their successful escape attempts to Spain. They call themselves: Harragas – those who burn the passports, the borders, their lives.
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.