Film Archive

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
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

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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
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Ain’t No Time for Women

Y’a pas d’heure pour les femmes
Sarra El Abed
International Competition Short Film 2020
Documentary Film
Canada
2020
19 minutes
Arabic,
French
Subtitles: 
English

The hairdressing salon “Saïda” is a space where people speak openly, laugh and argue. The subject rarely is hair. In the run-up to the presidential elections in Tunisia the shop turns into a political arena where the women – young or old, conservative or with a modern outlook – indulge in discussions about the pros and cons of the candidates. Their clever and witty statements reflect a young democracy with all its rifts and fault lines.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

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Director
Sarra El Abed
Cinematographer
Catherine Lefebvre
Editor
Jordan Choinière
Producer
Isabelle Grignon-Francke
Sound
Ilyaa Ghafouri
Score
Ilyaa Ghafouri
World Sales
Pierre Brouillette-Hamelin
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Alice’s Four Stories

Les quatre récits d’Alice
Myriam Jacob-Allard
International Competition Short Film 2020
Documentary Film
Canada
2019
5 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

Testimony versus “prosthetic memory”: The director dubs the sound recordings of her grandmother, collected over a period of ten years, in which the old lady recaps her encounter with a tornado as a child, in front of a green screen. While the details of her memories change through repeated narration over time, the found footage from feature and disaster films, weather reports and landscape images suggests a mediatised participation in the events.

Borjana Gaković

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Director
Myriam Jacob-Allard
Script
Myriam Jacob-Allard
Cinematographer
Myriam Jacob-Allard
Editor
Myriam Jacob-Allard
Producer
Myriam Jacob-Allard
Sound
Bruno Bélanger, Claire Jacob, Myriam Jacob-Allard
Narrator
Alice Gervais
Filmstill Families’ Albums

Families’ Albums

Albums de familles
Moïa Jobin-Paré
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Canada
2023
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Images of blurred landscapes fade into each other. Apparent rock formations reveal themselves only at second glance as collages of human body parts. Browsing further through the family album uncovers something that is rather rarely found in such private pictorial chronicles: the backs of people’s heads. Grandparents, aunts and friends do not, as usual, look out of the album and the then at the viewer in the now but into the mysterious depths of a neon-lighted corridor. Its architectural elements form a filmic labyrinth behind whose closed doors animated collages of arms and hands perform everyday gestures in a ghost-like pantomime.

Moïa Jobin-Paré opens found private photo albums. The connections and stories between the pictures remain as abstract as that which the photographs show is concrete. Poetic spaces of interpretation open up. The Canadian artist offers a special reading. She scrapes individual elements or patterns off the analogue photographs and animates these “painterly” edits in a space of washed-out sounds. Scratches and white dots spread mushroom-like on the physically dissolving images.

André Eckardt

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Director
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Script
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Cinematographer
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Editor
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Producer
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Sound
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Sound Design
Moïa Jobin-Paré
Animation
Moïa Jobin-Paré
World Sales
Serge Abiaad
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Camera Lucida 2023
Filmstill Feet in Water, Head on Fire
Feet in Water, Head on Fire
Terra Long
In southern California, date palms from the Middle East grow, tales from One Thousand and One Nights are told and a volcanic eruption is expected. A document of enchanting simultaneity.
Filmstill Feet in Water, Head on Fire

Feet in Water, Head on Fire

Feet in Water, Head on Fire
Terra Long
Camera Lucida 2023
Documentary Film
USA,
Canada
2023
90 minutes
Spanish,
English
Subtitles: 
English

Not a single cloud ever seems to drift across this sky, the sun never ceases to send its powerful rays down. Here, in southern California, where the San Andreas Fault has created an unmistakable topography and invisible water currents run under the barren soil, date palms thrive best: feet in water, head on fire. Terra Long has looked around, traced the history of the plants which originally came to North America from the Middle East, and visited the parades and festivities dedicated to the sugary fruit. Layer by layer, she constructs her very own perspective on the landscape and the people, translates her haptic impressions into magnificent 16mm shots and designs a complex soundtrack.

Long manages to join the past and present and produce a concise, quasi sensual extract. The laborious manual pollination of the date palms plays a role in it, as do the collapsed ecosystem of the Salton Sea, archived dresses of Arabian Nights beauty queens and interviews that testify only to what is now historical; as do elderly white couples floating in their pools and walking across the lawns of golf courses. “Feet in Water, Head on Fire” is a document of simultaneity that captivates from the first minute to the last.

Carolin Weidner

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Director
Terra Long
Cinematographer
Terra Long
Editor
Kaija Siirala, Terra Long
Producer
Terra Long, Mireya Martinez, Sharlene Bamboat
Sound Design
Richy Carey
Dancing in the Dark 2022
Filmstill Floralia II
Floralia II
Sabrina Ratté
From the pictorial concept of the floral still life to a 3D archive for extinct plants: Floral sculptures add a new dimension to representation. But life? Stays still.
Filmstill Floralia II

Floralia II

Floralia II
Sabrina Ratté
Dancing in the Dark 2022
Experimental Film
Canada
2021
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Ratté develops the pictorial concept of the floral still life into a new kind of illusionary space. The fragmented floral sculptures, created by 3D scans, design a speculative future in which extinct plants are preserved in a weightless archive. The representation gains a dimension but does not become more than a surface mould with no informative value about the living core.

Robert Seidel

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Director
Sabrina Ratté
Producer
Sabrina Ratté
Sound Design
Andrea-Jane Cornell
Score
Sabrina Ratté
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Floralia III

Floralia III
Sabrina Ratté
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
Experimental Film
Canada
2021
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A piece of soil with plants displayed in a cabinet – three-dimensional and yet only a digital image. The sound suggests a sterile exhibition space. As forest sounds start to play, the stems, leaves and blossoms dissolve in particles and layers. As if awakening from a coma, an organic rebellion flares up, a brief revolt against the technically perfect simulation of nature.

André Eckardt

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Director
Sabrina Ratté
Producer
Sabrina Ratté
Sound
Andrea-Jane Cornell
Score
Sabrina Ratté
Filmstill Gambling, Gods and LSD

Gambling, Gods and LSD

Gambling, Gods and LSD
Peter Mettler
Hommage Peter Mettler 2023
Documentary Film
Switzerland,
Canada
2002
180 minutes
English,
Swiss German,
Hindi
Subtitles: 
English

The motif of movement in film is a core element of Peter Mettler’s award-winning body of work: His journey here takes us from Canada via the USA to Switzerland and as far as India, the filmed moments associatively unfolding a tableau about different people. They are all, each in their own way, looking for transcendence and ecstasy. In this hypnotic trip about time and transience, the director is always ready to engage with the unexpected. His attitude is marked by curiosity and impartiality. Well over a hundred hours of footage feed into a brilliant montage in which transition and rapture also find visual and acoustic correspondences.

Annina Wettstein

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Director
Peter Mettler
Script
Peter Mettler
Cinematographer
Peter Mettler
Editor
Roland Schlimme, Peter Mettler
Producer
Cornelia Seitler, Alexandra Gill, Ingrid Veninger
Sound Design
Peter Bräker, Peter Mettler
Score
Fred Frith
German Distributor
GMfilms
Time to Act! 2022
Filmstill Geographies of Solitude
Geographies of Solitude
Jacquelyn Mills
Forty years ago, the environmental activist and scientist Zoe Lucas settled on Sable Island, a strip of sand in the Atlantic. The place became her home and life’s work.
Filmstill Geographies of Solitude

Geographies of Solitude

Geographies of Solitude
Jacquelyn Mills
Time to Act! 2022
Documentary Film
Canada
2022
103 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

Sable Island, a good 43 kilometres long, less than two kilometres wide, a crescent-shaped sand bank in the Atlantic, about 160 kilometres off the coast of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. This inhospitable looking place, permanently changed and moved by the weather, has been the home of Zoe Lucas for more than forty years. She once came for a brief visit as an art student, fascinated by the semi-wild horses on the island. She stayed, became an environmental activist, self-taught scientist and esteemed expert on biodiversity. Jacquelyn Mills’ enchanting 16mm images not only convey the enormous richness of the lonely landscapes. They also depict nature conservation as a fulfilling life’s work.

Lina Dinkla

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Director
Jacquelyn Mills
Cinematographer
Jacquelyn Mills
Editor
Jacquelyn Mills
Producer
Jacquelyn Mills, Rosalie Chicoine Perreault
Sound
Jacquelyn Mills
Sound Design
Jacquelyn Mills, Andreas Mendritzki
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Impossible Figures and Other Stories I

Figury niemożliwe i inne historie I
Marta Pajek
International Competition Short Film 2021
Animated Film
Canada,
Poland
2021
16 minutes
Polish
Subtitles: 
English

Marta Pajek (digitally) created a complex, atmospheric universe – with minimalist means and yet rich in detail. References to contemporary history meet visions of an intuited, dystopian future. We are made aware of (our own) transience in subtle, but almost brutal ways. Ageing bodies, ageing ideas. In the end, the grande dame of Polish cinema, actor Anna Polony, sings: “… when will we ever learn?”

Borjana Gaković

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Director
Marta Pajek
Script
Marta Pajek
Editor
Marta Pajek
Producer
Piotr Szczepanowicz, Grzegorz Wacławek
Co-Producer
Maral Mohammadian
Sound
Michał Jankowski, Piotr Knop
Score
Aleksandra Gryka
Animation
Marta Pajek, Alex Boya
World Sales
Luce Grosjean
Winner of: Golden Dove Short Animated Film (International Competition Short Film)
Kids DOK 2020
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Just for the Record
Vojin Vasović
The small recording device REC is startled by its own voice. Tirelessly REC tries to attract a bird to record its beautiful song.
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Just for the Record

Just for the Record
Vojin Vasović
Kids DOK 2020
Animated Film
Canada,
Serbia
2020
7 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

The small recording device named REC lives all alone in an abandoned attic when a bird appears at the window. REC is really excited and wants to talk to it. But when the bird hears REC’s “voice” it flies away in terror. Now REC tries everything to record the bird’s beautiful song. Time is running out, because its battery will soon be exhausted.

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Vojin Vasović
Script
Vojin Vasović
Editor
Marko Kovačević
Producer
Senka Radivojević, Vojin Vasović, Stevan Mitrović, Ivan Vasiljević
Sound
Vladimir Kerkez
Score
Dalibor Bekerević
Animation
Vojin Vasović, Nikola Stepković, Mladen Nikolić
World Sales
Georg Gruber
Funder
Canada Council for the Arts
Filmstill Kathy and Teresa

Kathy and Teresa

Kathy and Teresa
Marie Zrenner
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany,
Canada
2023
14 minutes
English,
Inuktitut
Subtitles: 
German, English

Two young girls are drifting in the water of a public swimming pool. The film adopts this drifting attitude as it follows them through nocturnal Montreal and their daily life. Sometimes the two speak English, sometimes Inuktitut. Kathy and Teresa come from a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada. They show each other smartphone pictures of seals and bears they killed themselves. They read about the special relationship between the Inuit and their sledge dogs, which has lost its importance today. Home assignments are done in a park – the scent of the trees reminds them a little of home. They close their eyes. With great tenderness, the camera captures the deep bond between the two best friends who share the same heritage and language. Kathy has written a moving song in Inuktitut. In simple, clear words, she sings of the feelings and yearnings of a young Indigenous woman.

Anke Leweke

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Director
Marie Zrenner
Script
Marie Zrenner, Kathy Snowball
Cinematographer
Youssef Nassar
Editor
Ulrike Tortora
Producer
Sabrina Kleder
Co-Producer
Caroline Bergoin
Sound
Teresa Annanack, Sabrina Kleder, Youssef Nassar
Sound Design
Cornelia Böhm
Score
Kathy Snowball
German Distributor
Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
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Neighbours
Norman McLaren
A neighbourhood dispute escalates … The pixilated movements of actors and scenery seem more and more absurd, heightened by the frantic sounds of the hand-drawn soundtrack.
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Neighbours

Voisins
Norman McLaren
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
Animated Film
Canada
1952
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

An escalating neighbourhood dispute as a pacifist parable on the Korean War. The pixilation, which Norman McLaren is said to have pioneered, makes plot and scenery look more and more absurd. The madness is heihgtened by frantic electronic sounds, which were also created by a special technique: McLaren drew optical sound signals in lines and dots by hand directly on the soundtrack.

André Eckardt

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Director
Norman McLaren
Cinematographer
Wolf Koenig
Producer
Norman McLaren
Score
Norman McLaren
Performer
Grant Munro, Jean-Paul Ladouceur
Kids DOK 2022
Filmstill Oasis
Oasis
Justine Martin
Raphaël and Rémi are twins who spend their holidays by the lake. But this is a time of farewell, because Raphaël will soon transfer to a school for children with disabilities.
Filmstill Oasis

Oasis

Oasis
Justine Martin
Kids DOK 2022
Documentary Film
Canada
2022
14 minutes
French

Raphaël and Rémi are twins and very close. They spend their time in the skate park and their holidays by the lake. There’s always something to do: boating, catching frogs, bathing in the rain. This could go on forever. But we slowly realise that these holidays are also a farewell, because Raphaël will soon transfer to a school for children with disabilities.

Lina Dinkla

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Director
Justine Martin
Cinematographer
Myriam Payette
Editor
Félix Bouffard-Dumas
Producer
Louis-Emmanuel Gagné-Brochu
Sound
Christophe Voyer
Score
Louis-Joseph Cliche
World Sales
Pierre Brouillette-Hamelin
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

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Director
Christopher Becks