Film Archive

Jahr

Sections (Film Archive)

Filmstill Suzanne from Day to Day

Suzanne from Day to Day

Suzanne jour après jour
Stéphane Manchematin, Serge Steyer
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
France
2023
88 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

For a year, over all four seasons, Stéphane Manchematin and Serge Steyer keep returning to the Vosges where Suzanne lives. By now she looks back on more than nine decades of life, an old lady who stoically clings to the self-sufficiency of the house where she was born. The place lacks all comfort, neither electricity nor water supply help with cooking or heating. Nonetheless, Suzanne wants for nothing: When the indoor temperature drops to single digits in winter, she simply takes a hot-water bottle to bed and adds another layer of blankets. In the bathroom, water reliably flows from a groove, and if the light hits the surrounding glass carafes, it soon dances through the room.

Manchematin and Steyer know how to stage everyday procedures and conditions alertly and sensitively – their film’s meanderings are as casual as they are focused. And Suzanne, too, becomes more and more approachable. After a very short time, one develops a sense of her habits, registers with amusement her eternal twirling of the telephone cord, or discovers a quite assertive person behind the wheel. All this happens without romanticisation or kitsch. Instead, the observation is characterised by abundant laconic wisdom.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Stéphane Manchematin, Serge Steyer
Cinematographer
Gautier Gumpper, Philippe Viladecas
Editor
Stéphane Manchematin, Serge Steyer
Producer
Sylvie Plunian, Milana Christitch
Sound
Stéphane Manchematin, Marc Namblard
Sound Design
Lionel Thiriet
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Filmstill Tale of the Three Flames

Tale of the Three Flames

As três chamas
Juliette Menthonnex
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Hungary,
Belgium,
Switzerland
2023
21 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal),
Spanish,
Dutch
Subtitles: 
English

“See you next year!” a Portuguese fire warden says as he dismantles his control equipment at the end of the season. Humans and nature in southern Europe may be used to forest fires, but that does not change the facts: The ever more massive conflagrations are caused by climate change. We have long been living in the age of fire.

In the Portuguese interior, a forest fire has just devastated a large area. Wounded nature is silent, not a single bird is heard, only the wind that makes the charred tree trunks rustle. But the vegetation recovers astonishingly fast. Where all life seemed to be gone, greenery soon sprouts from the ruined trees. The residents of the affected region are engaged in the reconstruction with great respect for their natural environment. Because plants, too, are sentient creatures. In quiet, almost melancholic, but also hopeful images, the film pays tribute to the strength of the trees and illustrates how essential it would be for humanity to learn to live in harmony with nature again.

Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Juliette Menthonnex
Cinematographer
Ilona Szekeres, Sergio da Costa
Editor
Antoine Flahaut, Juliette Menthonnex
Producer
Véronique Vergari, Victor Candeias, Agnès Boutruche
Sound
Juliette Menthonnex
Sound Design
Yatoni Roy Cantu
Filmstill The Wages of John Pernia

The Wages of John Pernia

The Wages of John Pernia
Ben Young
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
UK
2023
8 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

Before photography and film were invented and constructed the “Wild West”, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis, whose travels made the westwards expansion of the still young USA possible, died under mysterious circumstances. The present-day narrator of this film, a distant descendant, portrays him as the tragic hero of a speculative gay love story. The potential lover, Meriwether’s “Louisiana Creole” servant John Pernia, is historically documented. But the archive material, which favoured the white folklore of the so-called age of pioneers, lays no trail to this romance.

Ben Young wilds the early Western imagery and queers the nationalist historiography from the perspective of people who are missing in the tales of glory and whose originally free space was occupied by the settler movement and its subsequent legend formation. He uses associative montage and gossip to rehabilitate John and Meriwether, the undocumented romantic couple, as the real pioneers. And they have a score to settle with the U.S.

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ben Young
Script
Ben Young
Editor
Theo Watkins
Producer
Ben Young
Sound
Andrew Ludbrook
Sound Design
Theo Watkins, Andrew Ludbrook
Score
Blessed are the Hearts that Bend
Filmstill Three Windows on South West

Three Windows on South West

Three Windows on South West
Mariia Ponomarova
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Ukraine,
Netherlands
2023
8 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

In 2002, the filmmaker moved into an apartment on the 15th floor of a Kyiv high-rise. She was twelve at the time. Today, from the safe distance of another country, she talks to people who remember the flat and the time spent together. Coming-of-Age, the love of cinema, a sense of community and the erotic charge of individual moments combine to create an image of missing home and intimacy. With every memory, we zoom a little out of the still image on screen: three windows facing southwest, a balcony facing southeast, a rooftop protected from view, a high-rise panorama. The warm and personal gaze at the sky and houses of Kyiv is mirrored in the cold attentiveness of international war reporting.

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mariia Ponomarova
Script
Mariia Ponomarova
Editor
Mariia Ponomarova
Producer
Mariia Ponomarova
Sound Design
Sergio González Cuervo
World Sales
Lucila Riggio
-
Oleksii Isakov
Filmstill Universe Department Store

Universe Department Store

Yunibeoseu
Taewoong Won
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
South Korea
2022
80 minutes
Korean
Subtitles: 
English

Our memory is not to be trusted; it is interwoven with wishful thinking, dreams, romanticisations or repressions, superimposed or replaced by accidentally glimpsed images. If you want to make sure of your history, you might seek out the places of your childhood or youth to embark on a journey into the past. But what if those places are long gone, themselves as fleeting as the memories of them?

Director Won Taewoong was born in 1981, at a time when the city of Seoul, devastated in the civil war, was rapidly developing. Under the South Korean military dictatorship rice paddies turned into business and residential areas, multi-storey department stores with long escalators and attractions for children were built. In front of the Universe Department Store in Cheonho-dong on the eastern outskirts of the city, a space shuttle was erected that made the children’s imaginations run wild. But while modernisation was picking up speed, most of these malls closed down again after a few years. “Universe Department Store” is an attempted reconstruction. In conversations with peers whose memories often show enormous discrepancies and in hypnosis sessions, the director gets to the bottom of what memory is and discovers a dazzling universe between fact and fantasy.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Taewoong Won
Cinematographer
Taewoong Won, Suyu Lee
Editor
Taewoong Won
Producer
Il-kwon Kim
Sound
Suhyun Kim
Sound Design
Jiyoon Lee, Sungyui Lee
Score
Minkook Kang
Animation
Taewoong Won
World Sales
Sol ah Jin
Winner of: FIPRESCI Prize
Filmstill Where Zebus Speak French

Where Zebus Speak French

Sitabaomba
Nantenaina Lova
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Burkina Faso,
France,
Germany,
Madagascar
2023
103 minutes
French,
Malagasy
Subtitles: 
English

Does farmer Ly have dealings with the Chinese, who have recently been tampering with the infrastructure of the village of Sitabaomba, not far from the Malagasy capital of Antananarivo, director Nantenaina Lova asks as bluntly as mischievously. Ly denies it. However, it becomes increasingly clear in the course of “Where Zebus Speak French” that the various development measures, often introduced by foreign initiatives and fuelled by corrupted politicians, also affect him.

Focussing on Sitabaomba, Lova shows over several years how the village population attempt to defend their farmland. Their fight is reminiscent of David against Goliath but doesn’t lead to despondence. Because in Madagascar, a very unique form of artistic, especially linguistic expression has always been cultivated which, at its best, allows people to maintain an inner independence. The commentary is therefore spoken in the style of “Kabary.” This polite, rhetorically sophisticated and sometimes mocking form of speech elegantly circumvents criticism, thus stating it all the more clearly. An artist also visits the village repeatedly and makes stones speak with the children, confirming an attitude Nantenaina Lova describes as follows: “Laughing at injustice rather than crying, resisting rather than pitying.”

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Nantenaina Lova
Script
Nantenaina Lova, Eva Lova-Bély
Cinematographer
Nantenaina Lova, Nantenaina Fifaliana
Editor
Nantenaina Lova, Emmanuel Roy
Producer
Eva Lova-Bély, Candy Radifera
Co-Producer
Nicole Gehards, Nina Fernandez, Michel Zongo
Sound
Jonathan Narlysh Rafidiarison, Nantenaina Fifaliana
Sound Design
Julien Verstraete
Score
Various Malagasy Music Bands
Animation
Herizo Ramilijaonina
Narrator
Claudia Tagbo
Winner of: Leipziger Ring
Filmstill While the Green Grass Grows

While the Green Grass Grows

While the Green Grass Grows
Peter Mettler
Hommage Peter Mettler 2023
Documentary Film
Canada,
Switzerland
2023
166 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

A film that teaches us mindfulness. In his audiovisual diary, award-winning Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler says farewell to his mother and father. But the film transcends his personal work of mourning. In an always dialogue-oriented search movement over the cycle of life, he reflects on this world and the next, on existence and time. It is an eternal circuit and flow – like the continuous passing of clouds and rivers.

Visually as well as intellectually, Peter Mettler draws upon personal conversations, philosophical and spiritual texts as well as his own film and sound archive. His approach is characterised by openness and humility towards life and nature. This attentive attitude characterises the director’s notion of “film-making” per se that has shaped all his works. “While the Green Grass Grows” comprises two parts of a larger epic diary project with the same title.

Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Peter Mettler
Script
Peter Mettler
Cinematographer
Peter Mettler
Editor
Jordan Kawai, Peter Mettler
Producer
Cornelia Seitler, Peter Mettler, Brigitte Hofer
Sound
Peter Mettler
Sound Design
Jordan Kawai
Winner of: Golden Dove Feature-Length Film (International Competition Documentary Film)