Film Archive

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98 kg

98 kg
Izabela Plucińska
Competition for the Audience Award Short Film 2021
Animated Film
Germany,
Poland
2021
5 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

The cycle of domestic violence: tension, escalation, remorse, and then all over again. The woman in Izabela Plucińska’s film shares the fate of many sufferers: She can’t manage to break out. The metaphorical dumbbells she would have to lift to do it weigh 98 kilograms – like the man who does this to her. All she can do is dissolve, disappear and breathe silently into her individual parts. The animations keep erasing themselves, but painful marks are left behind.

Kim Busch

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Izabela Plucińska
Editor
Daniela Kinateder
Producer
Paulina Ratajczak, Izabela Plucińska
Sound
Andrea Martignoni
Score
Andrea Martignoni
Animation
Izabela Plucińska
World Sales
Maciej Reguła
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A Bay

Uma baía
Murilo Salles
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Brazil
2021
109 minutes
Portuguese (Brazil)
Subtitles: 
English

The Baía de Guanabara is not just any bay: the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro has sprawled around it. Its waste water threatens the rich ecosystem, planes roar along the approach corridors above. These filmic explorations on the margins of the megacity portray various environments that are all connected to the bay in a specific way. The people here are micro-wage earners making a modest living.

At night the lights of the city and the promises of capitalism shine in the distance. To the people living at the periphery, they seem out of reach. In eight chapters this documentary essay meditates on their habitats along the bay, following the repetitive and physically exhausting activities of humans and farm animals. Unusual perspectives, careful camera work and a poignant sound design elevate these observations to a commentary on the crisis in Brazil. Murilo Salles, who won a Silver Dove in Leipzig in 1978 for his debut “These Are the Weapons”, sheds light on the close link between geographical space and social inequality.
Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Murilo Salles
Script
Murilo Salles, Eva Randolph, Itauana Coquet
Cinematographer
Léo Bittencourt, Fabrício Mota
Editor
Eva Randolph
Producer
Murilo Salles
Sound
Felipe Luz
Score
João Jabace, Sarah Lelièvre
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
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A Black Jesus

A Black Jesus
Luca Lucchesi
Competition for the Audience Award 2020
Documentary Film
Germany
2020
92 minutes
English,
French,
Italian
Subtitles: 
English

In Siculiana, a small Sicilian town full of flaking facades, religiosity is lived out as a matter of course. And of course the figure of Jesus Christ worshipped here is black, and always has been. However, some people cannot get used to their dark-skinned neighbours in the refugee camp. The camera accompanies locals and stranded people along their paths, which often lead to the church, but not necessarily together, and draws a kind of map of the city in black-on-black contrasts.

It’s become quiet in Siculiana, a local says. He’s not referring to the loud demonstrations against the Villa Sikania, now converted into a refugee reception camp. And certainly not to the colourful flurry of activity that grips the city every year as the faithful prepare for the feast of the Finding of the Cross. That’s when they hang up the “Benvenuti” sign. But who exactly is welcomed here? The pomp and circumstance of the festivities are at the centre of this filmic portrait of a community in which the alleged common ground is disintegrating into voice and skin tones: between the black people from abroad and the black man on the cross who – according to an elderly lady – was forced to “darken” himself in order to incorporate human sins. Between an aging city stylised to the point of becoming scenery and God’s newly arrived children who promise a future and who could bring new life into the alleys.
Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Luca Lucchesi
Script
Hella Wenders, Luca Lucchesi
Cinematographer
Luca Lucchesi
Editor
Luca Lucchesi, Edoardo Morabito
Producer
Léa Germain, Wim Wenders
Co-Producer
Eric Friedler, Silke Schütze
Sound
Francesco Vitaliti
Score
Roy Paci
World Sales
Christa Auderlitzky
Broadcaster
Eric Friedler
Funder
Nordmedia
Competition for the Audience Award 2022
Filmstill A Bunch of Amateurs
A Bunch of Amateurs
Kim Hopkins
Dwindling membership, a crumbling club house, penniless coffers: The “Bradford Movie Makers” have seen better days. The funny and touching portrait of a band of film buffs.
Filmstill A Bunch of Amateurs

A Bunch of Amateurs

A Bunch of Amateurs
Kim Hopkins
Competition for the Audience Award 2022
Documentary Film
UK
2022
95 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
English

Dwindling membership, a crumbling club house, penniless coffers: The “Bradford Movie Makers” have seen better days. The active club members, most of them fairly advanced in years, sit there, basking in blissful memories and not mincing their words when they pick at the others’ film ideas over multiple cups of tea. Cineastes have met here every Monday since 1932 and can be proud of a ninety-year history including countless amateur films of all genres.

The “club”, as insiders call it, is a typical British working class film club: watching films together on a regular basis and spending every free minute on elaborate shoots including stunt riders and green screens. But the old veterans are beginning to get frail, the occasional death must be mourned. And then the pandemic comes on top of all this, darkening the only bright spot of the week. But it also brings unexpected surprises … Kim Hopkins manages the feat, despite a number of tragic-sad occasions, of avoiding the tear-jerker trap and gives us equally astonishing and funny insights into this pastime that’s far more than just a hobby. This quiet, funny and touching portrait of a band of film buffs – male and female – pays tribute to the need we all have to spend time together.
Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Kim Hopkins
Cinematographer
Kim Hopkins
Editor
Leah Marino
Producer
Margareta Szabo, Kim Hopkins
Sound
Margareta Szabo
Score
Terence Dunn
World Sales
Jenny Bohnhoff
Filmstill A Crab in the Pool

A Crab in the Pool

Un trou dans la poitrine
Alexandra Myotte, Jean-Sébastien Hamel
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Canada
2023
11 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

The teenager Zoe and her little brother Theo spend a day at the public swimming pool. Theo loses himself in his childish fantasies. The visitors of the pool look like characters from Greek mythology to him. Zoe, less than pleased at having to watch her little brother, hides in the changing room. She has problems of her own because she is struggling with the changes in her youthful body. She looks at her breasts in the mirror, which the tight bathing suit does nothing to disguise. The horror that this change provokes in her manifests in a terrible panic attack.

Theo’s flight to the realm of mythical creatures and Zoe’s anxiety attack are both caused by a shared traumatic experience. The two find a way to overcome past experiences – even without their mother’s support. Ingenious transitions, cleverly constructed details and, not least, great empathy for the siblings’ communicating inner and outer worlds make this film a convincing double portrait.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Alexandra Myotte, Jean-Sébastien Hamel
Script
Alexandra Myotte, Jean-Sébastien Hamel
Editor
Jean-Sébastien Hamel
Producer
Jean-Sébastien Hamel, Alexandra Myotte
Sound
François Lacasse
Animation
Alexandra Myotte
World Sales
Pierre Brouillette-Hamelin
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
International Competition 2021
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A Custom of the Sea
Fabrizio Polpettini
Three friends explore the radiance of the Mediterranean, which connects Christian and Islamic countries and has always been and still is a site of conflicts.
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A Custom of the Sea

Un usage de la mer
Fabrizio Polpettini
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
France
2021
52 minutes
Arabic,
English,
French,
Italian
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

Porto Maurizio, where the director, who lives in France today, grew up, is located on the Ligurian coast. The village is the starting point for a cinematic journey into the past that spans a surprisingly wide arc to a time when Muslim pirates, the corsairs, haunted the Mediterranean and took Europeans as slaves. To this end, the film light-handedly draws from the rich fund of film history and its iconography.

Adventure films from the 1940s and historical murals depict the naval battles of the early 19th century in powerful images. The director ingeniously combines such visual finds with analogue new recordings of a journey with two friends. Their seemingly loosely told anecdotes and chance encounters combine to form a coherent whole, forming a geopolitical system of coordinates around the Mediterranean that deals with eurocentrism, colonial history and religiously motivated conflicts between Christian and Islamic countries. The subjects couldn’t be more topical.
Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Fabrizio Polpettini
Cinematographer
Valentina Provini
Editor
Marylou Vergès
Producer
Fabrizio Polpettini
Co-Producer
Pierre-André Belin
International Competition 2022
Filmstill A Hawk as Big as a Horse
A Hawk as Big as a Horse
Sasha Kulak
In the periphery of Moscow, transgender ornithologist Lydia works at realising her dream to make the “Twin Peaks” universe more and more manifest in her life.
Filmstill A Hawk as Big as a Horse

A Hawk as Big as a Horse

Yastreb razmerom s loshad’
Sasha Kulak
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
France
2022
74 minutes
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

A blue wooden house at the edge of the forest, lonely, but not peaceful and quiet. This is where Lydia lives, a transgender ornithologist who presents herself in high heels and a pearl necklace one day, in cargo pants and functional wear the next. Director Sasha Kulak calls her film a documentary fairy tale, and the borders between reality and fiction are blurred indeed, because Lydia loves play, staging, the uncanny – and David Lynch.

Lydia has watched “Twin Peaks” more than thirty times, its characters and plots have long since spilled over into Shcherbinka, a small town south of Moscow. She claims to find bodies in the underbrush and even Lynch’s “Red Room” has been replicated under the roof of her house. Now she’s facing a new challenge: the creation of Lara, a lifelike silicone doll whose voice also guides us through Kulak’s cinematic tale. Lydia works hard at realising her dreams, but she is equally passionate about studying birds and the so-called Nezhulyas, shy eyeless creatures that are exceedingly cuddly and have tantric potential. “A Hawk as Big as a Horse” becomes a vehicle of Lydia’s visions, using three-dimensional animation and various cinematic techniques to open a portal to a very specific fantasy.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sasha Kulak
Cinematographer
Sasha Kulak
Editor
Sasha Kulak
Producer
Louis Beaudemont
Sound
Andrei Dergatchev
Score
Iakov Mironchev
Animation
Elizaveta Federmesser
Winner of: Special Mention (International Competition)
Filmstill A Life Like Any Other

A Life Like Any Other

Une vie comme une autre
Faustine Cros
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Belgium,
France
2022
68 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

Over many years, the director’s father filmed his family life almost obsessively. His daughter’s birth, his son’s first steps, and always Valérie, the young mother. An impressive fund of material which their now grown-up daughter Faustine appropriates to tell quite a different story: that of a woman who sees her role as a mother and its demands take away her freedom step by step.

In the here and now, the director observes her parents in the big empty house in the country: her hyperactive father who is constantly tinkering with something, and her chain-smoking mother who sits at the kitchen table and whose sharp mind can only be surmised from her eyes. What happened? What happened to the energetic and independent young make-up artist? The one who admires witches and wants to take a trip around the world. The one who could easily earn her own living but still gives up her job. “The gaze is important”, the now 60-year-old Valérie tells her daughter once while applying make-up. Yes, the gaze is important. And with her film, director Faustine Cros counters the gaze directed at her mother over all those years with a new narrative.
Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Faustine Cros
Cinematographer
Faustine Cros, Jean-Louis Cros
Editor
Faustine Cros, Cédric Zoenen
Producer
Julie Freres, Camille Laemlé
Co-Producer
Sound Image Culture, Centre de l'Audiovisuel à Bruxelles (CBA), RTBF
Sound
Faustine Cros
Score
Ferdinand Cros
World Sales
Anna Berthollet
Winner of: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, Silver Dove (International Competition)
Kids DOK 2023
Filmstill A Little Beetle Returns
A Little Beetle Returns
Elene Sebiskveradze
The little beetle tries unsuccessfully to get out of the sink. When the tap is opened, the watery whirlpool takes him into the wide world. The beginning of a wonderful journey.
Filmstill A Little Beetle Returns

A Little Beetle Returns

Patara xochos dabruneba
Elene Sebiskveradze
Kids DOK 2023
Animated Film
Georgia
2023
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
English

Again and again, the little coloured beetle tries to get out of the sink. The surface is so slippery! When he has almost made it, the tap is opened and the watery whirlpool carries him into the wide world. It’s quite perilous at first, but after a while it turns out to be only the beginning of a wonderful journey.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elene Sebiskveradze
Script
Elene Sebiskveradze
Cinematographer
Elene Sebiskveradze
Producer
Elene Sebiskveradze
Sound
TeTe Noise, Archil Khatchapuridze
Sound Design
TeTe Noise
Animation
Elene Sebiskveradze
Funder
Georgian National Film Center
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
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A Man and His Dog Out for Air
Robert Breer
Birdsong and meandering lines, sometimes solo, sometimes as a swarm movement. A park landscape, a staircase, and a man with a dog emerge fleetingly from the permanently changing forms.
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A Man and His Dog Out for Air

A Man and His Dog Out for Air
Robert Breer
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
Animated Film
USA
1957
2 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Birdsong and meandering lines, sometimes solo, sometimes as a swarm movement. In their midst a park landscape, a staircase, and a man with a dog seem to emerge fleetingly. In Robert Breer’s minimalist drawn animation, the abstract and the figurative briefly overlap, then fall apart again. The permanent change of the forms follows the pulse rate of the birdsong recorded in nature.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Robert Breer
Editor
Robert Breer
Sound
Frannie Breer
Animation
Robert Breer
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A Million

A Million
Arata Mori
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Japan,
Germany
2021
65 minutes
Japanese
Subtitles: 
English

The account of a journey through an imaginary city, filmed along China’s new trade routes. Like the fictionalized Marco Polo from Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”, the traveller in this film talks of worlds that resemble familiar places but follow their own, sometimes seemingly incredible rules. The observations condense into a meditation about the nature of cities and the transformation of the concept of globalization.

The foreign visitor’s voice sounds muffled, as if it were coming out of the cave whose interior views open the film. Time and again, the eye returns there – but the fluorescent rock faces soon turn into the sparkle of distant galaxies, the narrow confines of the cave indistinguishable from the vastness of space. It is a symbol of the decoupling of sign and meaning, of “real” and “false”, of sensual impressions and their positive geographical allocation that pervades the film: Daft Punk perform in front of a Chinese shopping mall; the Eiffel Tower stands first in a housing estate, then, folded up to a fraction of its size, in view of Big Ben and Tower Bridge.
Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Arata Mori
Cinematographer
Arata Mori
Editor
Arata Mori
Producer
Arata Mori
Co-Producer
Andreas Hartmann, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Sound
Philippe Ciompi
Score
Yu Miyashita
Animation Night 2023
Filmstill A Moment’s Reverie
A Moment’s Reverie
Tess Martin
A train leaves the station, carrying a person whose thoughts begin to drift while reading a book. A surreal journey through memory fragments, sounds and textures begins.

UK

UK
2007
Filmstill A Moment’s Reverie

A Moment’s Reverie

A Moment’s Reverie
Tess Martin
Animation Night 2023
Animated Film
UK
2007
10 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

A train journey begins. On board is a reader whose thoughts begin to move. The letters change and flow from the pages of the book, carrying us into a world of memories and associations. We meet the letters again: swimming in a tea cup. Shot, they bleed to death on a sheet of paper and at last evaporate into the night sky.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tess Martin
Animation
Tess Martin
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A New Shift

Nová šichta
Jindřich Andrš
Competition for the Audience Award 2020
Documentary Film
Czech Republic
2020
90 minutes
Czech
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, English

For Tomáš the mine is the centre of his life, along with soccer, his kids and the cosy after-work beer. The 44-year-old has worked as a miner for 21 years, until the mine was closed down for economic reasons. Tomáš then re-trains as a coder in the appropriately named educational programme “New Shift”. What he doesn’t know yet is that his new skills alone won’t get him out of the crisis. A film about a tug-of-war with fate and the employment market.

In the constant ups and downs of looking for a job Tomáš shows impressive stamina, despite critical voices around him. His hopeful attitude repeatedly gets him in the local news as a positive example of successful reintegration – long before success is even remotely on the horizon. Jindřich Andrš’ first feature-length film is an equally quiet and thrilling observation. He gently follows his loveable protagonist and manages to present the tricky job situation with dignity and empathy. What emerges clearly is that unemployment and lack of jobs have long ceased to be phenomena that only occur on the fringes of our societies. They are part of a normality that the majority of people must cope with.
Kim Busch

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Jindřich Andrš
Script
Jindřich Andrš
Cinematographer
Tomáš Frkal
Editor
Lukáš Janičík
Producer
Miloš Lochman, Augustina Micková
Co-Producer
FAMU, Studio Bystrouška, Czech Television
Sound
Šimon Herrmann
Score
Eliška Cílková
Winner of: Golden Dove (Audience Competition), MDR Film Prize
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A Night of Knowing Nothing

A Night of Knowing Nothing
Payal Kapadia
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
France,
India
2021
96 minutes
Hindi,
Bengali
Subtitles: 
English

Riots and protests at an Indian film school, told in letters written by student L to her lover K, in which she reflects on what’s happening around her. While government forces gradually push back the rebellion, L realizes that she will never receive an answer because K belongs to a higher caste. The anonymous lines are wistful echoes of a love tragedy in times of the resurgence of a nationalistic class society.

Director Payal Kapadia steeps the visual material, compiled from a variety of sources and testifying to long, draining nights of protest, but also to great determination and a youthful exuberance, almost consistently in grainy black and white. Even mobile phone or surveillance camera footage are thus aesthetically related to 16mm student films from past decades. But against this contrast the immediate, unfinished nature of what is shown becomes all the more apparent, referencing the complex dialogue between a fragile memory and a tumultuous present that goes on in the film. A present in which questions of artistic representation, but also of personal responsibility, must be renegotiated.
Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Payal Kapadia
Script
Payal Kapadia, Himanshu Prajapati
Cinematographer
Ranabir Das
Editor
Ranabir Das
Producer
Thomas Hakim, Julien Graff, Ranabir Das
Sound
Moinak Bose, Romain Ozanne
World Sales
Wouter Jansen
Filmstill A Night Song

A Night Song

Le chant de la nuit
Félix Lamarche
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Canada
2022
45 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

A patient camera glides over the everyday objects: still lives on the wall, flowers in the vase, a swaying drop light. The sun enters the cosy home where Noëlla sits smoking at her laptop, playing Solitaire. The situation is hopeless. She’s going to lose against the computer once again. All the while her son-in-law, Pierre, is organising everything she needs, pragmatic and friendly: breakfast, the (last) doctor’s visit – and then the transfer.

Because Noëlla intends to die, and she is determined. Pierre conscientiously manages the paperwork and invites her loved ones to say goodbye. They bring photos and chat with the protagonist who is about to depart this life and who waves one last time before the doctor administers the deadly dose. Bye bye, that’s it. Dying can be so unexcited. This slowed-down, minute study of time very gradually acquires a completely different meaning from what one assumed at first. How one would love to see the onetakes from the beginning again. Félix Lamarche’s unpretentious observation evolves into a metaphor of life. Noëlla’s insistent head-on gaze from the screen into the viewers’ eyes will always be unforgettable.
Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Félix Lamarche
Cinematographer
Félix Lamarche
Editor
René Roberge
Producer
Félix Lamarche
Sound
Samuel Gagnon-Thibodeau
World Sales
Robin Miranda das Neves
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Filmstill A Provincial Hospital

A Provincial Hospital

A Provincial Hospital
Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva
Panorama Middle and Eastern Europe 2022
Documentary Film
Bulgaria,
Germany
2022
110 minutes
Bulgarian
Subtitles: 
English

Kyustendil, a city in the Bulgarian mountains, was hit hard by Covid. The local hospital is probably a reasonably representative microcosm of how the medical staff dealt with the worst consequences of the pandemic. Ten years after his debut “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” (DOK Leipzig 2012), Ilian Metev returns with another film about a national health system that opposes the virus with gallows humour and individual commitment.

Metev himself was stuck in London during the shooting, monitoring from afar as co-director Teneva and her colleague Chertov collected the material and edited it alone. The focus is on the hospital staff. And if there is one main protagonist among the countless members of the cast, it’s Dr. Popov. Warm-hearted and always ready with a quip, we even often see him without a mask – the other employees are usually hidden behind protective gear. They all share a tough sense of humour to get them through the days and nights. The logistical challenges of such a film project also crop up: The people with the cameras are frequently mentioned and addressed. In this emergency community of patients, doctors and film crew they seem to be always ready to joke. But death, up in the intensive care unit, is very close.
Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva
Script
Ilian Metev, Ivan Chertov, Zlatina Teneva
Cinematographer
Ivan Chertov
Editor
Ilian Metev
Producer
Martichka Bozhilova, Ilian Metev, Ingmar Trost
Sound
Zlatina Teneva
Sound Design
Ivan Andreev, Adrian Lo
World Sales
Marcella Jelić
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize