Film Archive

Jahr

Filmstill Beauty and the Lawyer

Beauty and the Lawyer

Beauty and the Lawyer
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Armenia,
France
2023
105 minutes
Armenian
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, English

The film opens with the wedding of Garik and Hasmik and ends with a decorated tree for their son’s first Christmas in the new house that his father built himself. Between these fixed points of middle-class family life, nothing is as heteronormative as this bracket and above all the political and religious mainstream in Armenia would lead one to expect.

Hasmik is a lawyer who fights for LGBTQIA+ rights, her husband appears in the media as drag performer Carabina, does sex work and makes his life in a queer-phobic environment the subject of an autobiographical theatre performance. The film, which evolved out of close friendship and is always one step behind the wild energy of Garik/Carabina, takes a precarious, raw, but also utopian-tinted look at current social struggles. The longing for normality, emancipation and responsibility find themselves exposed – sometimes powerless and unprotected – to violent defamation. TV images show the zeal behind the attempted construction of homosexual and trans persons as “Un-Armenian.” Meanwhile Carabina, in a moment of rest from plastering the house, trowel in hand, plays a song by Charles Aznavour, whose family came from Armenia – “What Makes a Man?”

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
Cinematographer
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
Editor
Wei-Yuan Song
Producer
Jean-Marie Gigon
Co-Producer
Hovhannes Ishkhanyan
Sound Design
Thomas Fourel
-
Hasmik Petrosyan, Garik Amolikyan
Winner of: Silver Dove Feature-Length Film (International Competition Documentary Film)
Filmstill Kumva – Which Comes from Silence

Kumva – Which Comes from Silence

Kumva – Ce qui vient du silence
Sarah Mallégol
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
France
2022
108 minutes
French,
Kinyarwanda
Subtitles: 
English

Quietly and discreetly, the French director Sarah Mallégol follows a group of thirty-something protagonists who survived the 1994 Rwanda genocide as children. They have no memory of the events – neither those whose fathers were murdered nor those whose parents were responsible. A confrontation begins: focused conversations between generations which, captured by a gentle camera, are meant to cautiously break the long silence – in order to be able to understand, process and mourn.

Sarah Mallégol herself grew up in Rwanda, before the genocide. She has no memories of her childhood either. But there are home movies shot on Super 8 that show carefree days in a still peaceful countryside – and her nanny from back then, Christine. She died in 1994, which is all the director knows. Her motivation for this filmic search is thus personal. But after the short introduction, she gives all the space to those who live in Rwanda today with the trauma that has spread over the country like a shroud. Grief is at the forefront and the film work contributes to a much-needed coming to terms – accompanied by chants and landscape shots added to the memories of the survivors that bear a different form of witness.

Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sarah Mallégol
Cinematographer
Arnaud Alain
Editor
Marie Beaune
Producer
Louise Hentgen
Sound
Eugène Safali, Pierre George, Jocelyn Robert
-
Ugo Casabianca
Winner of: Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Filmstill Mamie 44

Mamie 44

Mamie 44
Lucie Dèche
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
France
2023
55 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

An old family secret is fermenting in the father’s winery in southwest France. The grandfather had been executed by the Résistance in 1944 because he had collaborated with the Nazis. For decades, no one talked about it, daily work continued, from cultivation to harvest, from the wine press to maturation, an eternal cycle. The daughter comes to visit with a camera and a microphone. She remixes the sounds of farming, asks questions, builds openings in the experimental interstices between image and sound for the father to come to himself. Maybe what was buried and ploughed under can be reflected today – if they succeed in breaking the cycle for a moment.

The father has answers. He knows the patriarchal system of agriculture, where neighbours are envious and unpleasant things are quickly interred so they will not be passed on to the children. And yet what was interred has not dissolved completely, over generations. Insects buzz over the soil, something underneath attracts them. A small frog is caught in the wine press with the grapes. And the filmmaker’s daughter looks for a new tune on the old family piano.

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Lucie Dèche
Cinematographer
Lucie Dèche
Editor
Caro Beuret
Producer
Guillaume Bordier
Sound Design
Lucie Dèche
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize
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 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