Film Archive

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Only the Earth and the Mountains

Only the Earth and the Mountains
Elleni Sclavenitis
International Competition Short Film 2021
Documentary Film
USA
2020
29 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

The Sand Creek Massacre on 29 November 1864: More than 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho were murdered by the U.S. Cavalry. Ignorant hand-downs from the past and the omnipresence of statues glorifying murderers are juxtaposed with an empty museum of indigenous history for which there is no funding. This film against forgetting by a white female director also examines its own position: she talks frankly with descendants of the survivors – many of whom are choosing a scientific approach to history.

Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elleni Sclavenitis
Script
Elleni Sclavenitis
Cinematographer
Elleni Sclavenitis
Editor
Elleni Sclavenitis
Producer
Elleni Sclavenitis
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Open One’s Mouth

Kuchi wo hiraku
Akane Murata
International Competition Short Film 2021
Animated Film
Japan
2021
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Paper and colour pigments lead a life of their own. The material awakens and begins to talk, opening its mouth. The colours speak to each other, their substances add up to form a multi-layered tale about the strains of dialogue and interaction. The texture of the hand-painted individual frames is closely interwoven with a sonic tapestry of human sounds and minimalist electronic resonances.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Akane Murata
Producer
Kei Oyama
Sound
Naoaki Nishimura
German Competition Short Film 2020
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Operation Moonbird
Dustin Lose
A gloomy filmic contribution to sea rescue and a concentrated revelation of the mechanisms of systematic flight prevention in the Mediterranean and the people responsible for it.
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Operation Moonbird

Operation Moonbird
Dustin Lose
German Competition Short Film 2020
Documentary Film
Germany
2020
22 minutes
English,
German
Subtitles: 
English, German

A person swims for their life in the open sea. A European merchant vessel starts its engines and sails away from them. The pilot of a civilian aerial reconnaissance plane admonishes the captain and appeals to his conscience. The Libyan coast guard and the swimming person reach the decks of the European merchant vessel at the same time. Outcome unknown. The world turns in circles. This is not a film about the alleged refugee problem but one about the problem called Europe.

Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dustin Lose
Script
Dustin Lose
Cinematographer
Dustin Lose
Editor
Dustin Lose
Producer
Dustin Lose
Sound
Mladjan Matavulj
Winner of: Young Eyes Film Award
Slowenian Animation 2022
Filmstill Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled
Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled
Špela Čadež
A commissioned work: Špela Čadež’s summary of the legendary comedy drama show set in a women’s prison, “unravelled” in soft and scratchy wool, yellow as urine and red as blood.
Filmstill Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled

Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled

Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled
Špela Čadež
Slowenian Animation 2022
Animated Film
USA
2017
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

To promote the start of season five, Špela Čadež summarises the first four seasons of the legendary US comedy drama show for Netflix. From the streaming provider’s logo to the canteen food through to vomit – Čadež “unravels” her condensed version of the stories from the women’s prison in soft and scratchy wool, yellow as urine and red as blood.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Špela Čadež
Cinematographer
Mitja Ličen
Editor
Matic Drakulić
Producer
Tina Smrekar
Sound
Julij Zornik
Score
Drago Ivanuša
Animation
Zarja Menart, Leon Vidmar, Lea Vučko
Animation Night 2023
Filmstill Orbit
Orbit
Tess Martin
Drawings on rotating discs guide us through the cycle of life on earth, make us feel the rhythm of nature and tell of the origins of the moving image.
Filmstill Orbit

Orbit

Orbit
Tess Martin
Animation Night 2023
Animated Film
Netherlands
2019
7 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

As we watch individual details and their interplay as a whole, presented on rotating discs, we get a spark of insight into the interactions of flora and fauna on earth and the elemental power of our central star, the sun. Temporality, rhythm and the functioning of film are hinted at. A look at the origins of life and the moving image.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tess Martin
Cinematographer
Matija Pekić
Score
Jason Staczek
Animation
Tess Martin
Time to Act! 2022
Filmstill Oro Blanco
Oro Blanco
Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez
The downside of e-mobility: Because big corporations are mining lithium for batteries in the Argentinian salt deserts, the indigenous population have no water to live.
Filmstill Oro Blanco

Oro Blanco

Oro Blanco
Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez
Time to Act! 2022
Documentary Film
Germany,
Argentina
2018
23 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

The vast expanses of the Argentinian salt deserts hold one of the greatest lithium deposits in the world. International corporations are mining the “white gold”, robbing the indigenous groups who, since time immemorial, have bred llamas and lived on traditional salt-mining in this area, of precious ground water. In magnificent images and with a narrative approach that combines poetry and agitprop, “Oro Blanco” shows how the indigenous population are fighting against the exploitation and destruction of “pacha mama”. Their resistance needs some heightened awareness on the other side of the world, where lithium batteries are all too often regarded as the cure-all against the use of fossil fuels.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez
Cinematographer
Rina Zimmering
Editor
Robert Vakily
Producer
Luciana Newton, Luciana Newton
Sound
Nuno Rodriguez
Score
Andreas Goldbrunner
Filmstill Our Fate

Our Fate

Sorta nostra
Michele Sammarco
International Competition Short Film 2022
Documentary Film
Italy
2022
20 minutes
Italian
Subtitles: 
English

Shaking his head, Michele looks at the olives lying on the ground. Nobody collects them now. He once planted the olive trees. They were his pride and fed the family. Now he sits by the fireplace with his wife. Their hands show the years of hard field work. With a tender gaze, their grandson watches his grandparents cook, argue, take walks. Moving snapshots that coalesce into a life lived, a chronicle of the rural exodus in Italy.

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Michele Sammarco
Script
Michele Sammarco
Cinematographer
Michele Sammarco
Editor
Michele Sammarco
Producer
Michele Sammarco
Sound
Agit Utlu, Tommaso Barbaro
Production Company
Intervallo Film
Audience Award Competition 2021
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Our Memory Belongs to Us
Rami Farah, Signe Byrge Sørensen
In the midst of a cruel conflict, Syrian activists place their hopes in the production of images. What stories do their recordings tell? What role do they play as testimonies?
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Our Memory Belongs to Us

Frihed, håb og andre synder – Den syriske revolution 10 år senere
Rami Farah, Signe Byrge Sørensen
Competition for the Audience Award 2021
Documentary Film
Denmark,
France
2021
90 minutes
Arabic
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, English

The most valuable thing Yadan carries with him on his flight is a hard drive. It contains almost 13,000 videos recorded in 2011 and 2012 by him and other insurgents in Daraa, the “cradle” of the Syrian revolution. Eight years later, Yadan and two of his fellow travellers meet in a theatre in Paris to (re)confront the material. In the dialogue between the men and the images, a piece of the country’s history begins to take shape.

When peaceful protest turns into brutal war, a small group of civilians become the voice of Daraa. They film where there is no official coverage: at first in order to help the revolution into actual existence by their media representation, later to bear witness in an urgent plea for help to the international community. Against the human rights crimes of the government troops, against shelling and bombs – the camera is their weapon. The cinematic set-up becomes the starting point for a reflection about the meaning of images, then and now, and at the same time triggers a conversion of personal into collective memories. The protagonists’ reactions reveal how painful this process is: “Is the collection of the story worth all the violence that memory brings back?” is asked from offscreen. The film gives a decisive answer.
Sarina Lacaf

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Rami Farah, Signe Byrge Sørensen
Script
Dima Saber, Rami Farah, Lyana Saleh, Signe Byrge Sørensen
Cinematographer
Henrik Bohn Ipsen
Editor
Gladys Joujou
Producer
Signe Byrge Sørensen, Lyana Saleh, Anne Köhncke
Co-Producer
Reema Jarrar
Sound
Henrik Garnov
Score
Kinan Azmeh
Winner of: Film Prize Leipziger Ring
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Our Quiet Place

Un endroit silencieux
Elitza Gueorguieva
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Bulgaria,
France
2021
68 minutes
Bulgarian,
English,
French
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

By adopting the French language, Belarusian writer Aliona Gloukhova has found a way to write about her vanished father. Director Elitza Gueorguieva follows this process, which culminates in the publication of a book. At the same time, the lives of two women cross paths who ended up in Western Europe partly to gain distance from their home countries, Belarus and Bulgaria.

Using the coordinate system of a foreign language to express what would feel dramatic or pathetic otherwise: Aliona Gloukhova chose this method to write down the story of her father, a quiet dissident and Chernobyl expert who suddenly disappeared in the mid-1990s. The memories of him are sketchy, and perhaps even what masquerades as memory isn’t real. Aliona immerses herself in fiction and the French vocabulary that gives her the freedom to formulate her own version of what happened. Elitza Gueorguieva follows this cautious approach to the biographical-linguistic complex, which also appeals to her own memories. Because on the streets of Minsk, which she walks with Aliona, she immediately feels the familiar childhood fear. It overwhelms her like biting into a madeleine she had better not tasted.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elitza Gueorguieva
Cinematographer
Thomas Favel, Elitza Gueorguieva
Editor
Mélanie Braux
Producer
Eugénie Michel Villette
Co-Producer
Martichka Bozhilova
Sound
Arno Ledoux
Score
Arno Ledoux
Audience Award Competition Short Film 2020
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Out of Bounds
Franz Impler
A video game takes some entertaining and philosophical wrong turns: the tennis player slides from the centre court into a parallel world. A search for identity outside the rules of the game begins.
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Out of Bounds

Out of Bounds
Franz Impler
Competition for the Audience Award Short Film 2020
Animated Film
Germany
2020
15 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
English

A video game takes some entertaining and philosophical wrong turns: the tennis player figure slides from the centre court into a parallel world and is robbed of his racket. The quirky “Pong” setting gradually evolves into the course of a desperate search for identity outside the rules of the game. The pathetic polygonal Roger Federer stumbles over glitches. Rowdy supporting characters offer first harassment, then help. The design, this undead relic from the past of games, is a subversive fellow player.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Franz Impler
Producer
Franz Impler
Beyond Animation 2023
Filmstill Ouverture
Ouverture
Christopher Becks
Inside a barn the camera catches daylight filtering through the gaps in the crooked walls. The flashing rays seem like the heartbeat of this fragile building.
Filmstill Ouverture

Ouverture

Ouverture
Christopher Becks
Beyond Animation 2023
Animated Film
Canada
2012
5 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Inside a barn the camera catches the daylight filtering into the fragile building through the irregular gaps and crevices in its wooden skin. It chases them with whip pans or ambushes the slowly creeping sunlight with time-lapse shots. The flashing, blazing rays seem like the heartbeat of this chamber of light. There is no outside view.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Christopher Becks
Retrospective 2022
Filmstill Once You’ve Worn Out the First Pair of Wooden Shoes …
Once You’ve Worn Out the First Pair of Wooden Shoes …
Gabriele Denecke
A visit to the quarrymen at the Reinhardtsdorf open cast mine: The film pierces through the dimensions of this traditional job and sets out on a sometimes hallucinatory trail.
Filmstill Once You’ve Worn Out the First Pair of Wooden Shoes …

Once You’ve Worn Out the First Pair of Wooden Shoes …

Wer ein paar Holzlatschen abgelaufen hat …
Gabriele Denecke
Retrospective 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1976
33 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

A handful of quarrymen in the Reinhardtsdorf open cast mine near Bad Schandau dig out the coveted Elbe natural stone. Gabriele Denecke’s approach to the men, who are of different ages, is almost trance-like, the movement to and from the stones marks the transition to another world. We hear about the merciless working conditions of the past, about alcohol, people worn out before their time. Today, digging out the massive rocks in the midst of nature also constitutes a degree of freedom. Open cast miners share a special mindset. And: Once you’ve worn out your first pair of wooden shoes, you’ll stay – probably forever.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Gabriele Denecke
Script
Gabriele Denecke
Cinematographer
Eberhard Geick
Producer
Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen der DDR