In heated, often hostile debates about homosexuality, trans and sex work, a young Armenian family tries to assert some kind of queer normality for themselves and others.
Carabina, a gay artist, transvestite, and ex-sex worker, is married to Hasmik, a heterosexual lawyer. They have just become parents and are facing a dilemma: Should they raise their child in Armenia, where 93% of the population is against homosexuality?
Sorbian life in Lusatia, today. Encounters with a population who are reclaiming their identity, language and culture out of the local museums into present-day Federal Germany.
Bei uns heißt sie Hanka / Pla nas gronje jej Hanka / Pola nas rěka wona Hanka
Grit Lemke
German Competition Documentary Film,
MDR Special Screening
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
92 minutes
German
World premiere
Synopsis
What makes us who we are? Origin, mother tongue, nationality? What if we lose them?
In search of her own roots, the director explores an indigenous people in Germany: the Sorbs, the smallest Slavic people. Their language and culture have either disappeared or are severely threatened by centuries of oppression and pressure to assimilate. But a new generation no longer wants to accept this: Anna, a law student, becomes a Sorbian Hanka and joins the family of Ignac, who is committed to Sorbian self-determination. Petra comes to terms with the trauma she suffered when her village, like many other Sorbian villages, had to make way for a lignite mine. The young artist Hella redefines being Sorbian as alternative, anti-fascist and feminist. Former hooligan Měto turned his life around after discovering his Sorbian roots. His grandfather, who was beaten up as a child for speaking Sorbian, is battling dementia. National Sorbian poet Jurij Koch reflects on survival against all odds. Ginter, whose parents had to provide an “Aryan Certificate” in the 1930s and raised him speaking German, wonders about his identity today in old age.
Metaphorical images of nature, poetic reflections of a first-person narrator and archaic but experimental Sorbian music interplay in the first-ever film about Sorbs.
In Blind Date 2.0, Paul once again receives the filmmaker at his home – this time in order to shoot a sex date. Far from the spectacularly pornographic, but also from amateur porn, there is room to first of all clarify preferences, and consensus is established. Since both men are rather on the passive side and the double dildo fails to win over the visitor, they agree on a blowjob and find a practicable middle ground in mutual masturbation. Blind Date 2.0 does not aim at producing arousal but constitutes a doubly empathetic approach – that of the filmmaker to his protagonist, and that of the protagonist to his rather monosyllabic visitor. In targeted, unspectacular framing, the film captures the sex-positive in the ordinary, in the non-standardised, and above all in the context of social interaction: comprehensible, moving, and with a memorable cigarette afterwards.
A look back at a GDR childhood by the sea, where boundaries and freedoms were always close to each other: a poetic autobiography, condensed in hundreds of watercolours.
A coastal childhood during the dictatorship. A search for traces and a bittersweet declaration of love. Based on hundreds of watercolour paintings, this hand-animated film speaks of departure, return and remembrance, inspired by biography. A “Heimatfilm” from the shore that was a death strip.
The sun shines every day in Chagrin Valley, USA. Frozen in a 1950s-inspired artificial decor, this assisted living facility for people who suffer from dementia is home to fragile and ageing residents. Here, everyday life drags on slowly. Florence and her companions dream of an elusive elsewhere during their days punctuated by confusion, fleeting conflicts and overdue family visits. The caregivers – as kind as they are exhausted – run the show in this pastel-coloured, sanitised social theatre. Between two shifts, they confess their desire for a better future; one that is not so different from that of the residents, after all.
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.
In Eastern Serbia, in a town with a dual identity divided between magic and industry, a family whose destiny is intrinsically linked with both does their best to ensure the survival of their traditions and their future generations. Lifelong miner Dragan Markovic is the last in a line of dragon hunters, while his sister Desa is the widow of the union leader who is trying to continue his legacy by ensuring the rights of fellow mine-worker families.
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.
Gedanken-Aufschluss Prize, DOK Leipzig, Germany (2023)
German Competition Documentary Film
Gudow Nord
Sophia Schachtner
A summer Sunday at a motorway service area. The trucks stand still. The drivers doze, cook, stare into space. A phone call with the family provides inner and outer movement.
Can you imagine that the cows look different in Germany? A summer day at a rest area of the German Autobahn. The trucks line up. Everything stands still. Nothing moves. Behind the windshield. Under the tarpaulin. Between the trucks. A temporary home. They are waiting. Next to it nature.
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.
Old Super 8 films show domestic happiness, the West German economic miracle, an idyllic home, grandmother Rose as a young woman at the centre. They do not show the violence in Rose’s marriage. Or do they?
Home Sweet Home is a film about the invisibility of domestic violence. It is the story of the director's grandmother, Rose, who, for over 20 years, was married to a man who repeatedly abused her until she finally left him. Based on Super8 family archive, the director questions Rose, who continually dismantles the image of postwar West German family happiness. The film focuses on the discrepancy between appearance and remembered reality.
As domestic violence is usually not visible, the private abyss is skilfully hidden in public.
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.
Animals coming from Eastern Europe for the Italian meat industry used to be transported to the towns in Northeast Italy, and only one animal managed to come in and out alive.
Animals coming from Eastern Europe for the Italian food/meat industry used to be transported to the towns along the state border in Northeast Italy. In those conveyor-belt spaces of death, only one animal managed to come in and out alive.
14-year-old Kiki is sentenced to juvenile prison for violence and drug offences. His sister convinces the authorities to give him one last chance: a therapeutic trip to the desert.
After being kicked out of every available youth-at-risk framework, and after facing criminal charges for drug trafficking and violence, Kiki is about to enter a youth prison by court order. Gal, his sister, manages to convince the authorities to give Kiki one last chance. Gal is a caregiver for youth-at-risk in a framework that takes youth on experiential, therapeutic field trips through the desert. Gal and her co-workers take Kiki on a field trip to the desert. She is determined to succeed where everyone else has failed. Will the journey enable Kiki to grow and to take responsibility for his own fate?
A sensitive examination of an abuse scandal in an evangelical children’s home in Baden-Württemberg. Victims’ testimonies are confronted with the shameful relativisations of the church.
The pastor is encouraging forgiveness, many people in the parish feel that it's time to put the matter to rest – and the former child victims are fighting for recognition and dignity…
Korntal, a little town in the south of Germany, is the scene of the greatest abuse scandal ever to rock the Protestant Church in Germany. An estimated 150 former children from homes run by the Pietist Brotherhood have broken their silence: they are revealing the physical and mental horrors to which they were exposed. Many of them were victims of sexualised violence there at an early age. The 9,000-person town and its parish have responded to the accusations with disbelief and denial. They cannot imagine that this could have happened in their God-fearing town. However, pressure is mounting on the Protestant Brotherhood – which still runs children's homes – and an inquiry is initiated. There is much contention about compensation and how to proceed with the inquiry. Many victims are being re-traumatised by their testimonies being called into question and are describing the inquiry as further abuse. The film gives 6 protagonists the chance to tell their stories and to put right what they feel the inquiry report fails to disclose. A sensitive, profound treatment of a highly topical subject.
After the coup in Uruguay in 1973, thousands of intellectuals and artists fled the country. My father was among them and left for Europe. After his passing three years ago, I came upon some Super 8 movies and audio recordings he had made. Through this archive, I started building a new family story trying to reveal and understand the silent pain of his exile and the fierce will to be a family despite the estrangement.
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.