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Filmstill We Call Her Hanka

We Call Her Hanka

Bei uns heißt sie Hanka / Pla nas gronje jej Hanka / Pola nas rěka wona Hanka
Grit Lemke
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
92 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

A green lawn like an unused carpet, encircled by a neat forest edge, in the background the steaming cooling towers of a coal power station – impressionistic camera images from Lusatia. They summarise in one pan how a used-up utilitarian landscape is trying to recultivate itself. Can ancient identity and language be re-discovered amid this strange artificiality? The director travelled through this region in search of her origins. She was born here, in Lusatia. This is her home and that of the smallest of all Slavic peoples: the Sorbs.

She thinks about the assimilation of this cultural and linguistic community with the indigenous people, about its history of oppression in the various German systems, about a region caught up in structural change and the identity-shaping power of words – even if one has to learn them anew first. She meets a German Anna who becomes a Sorbian Hanka. She encounters people dedicated to preserving the traditions. The younger folks especially see their Sorbian-ness as a commitment to a community spirit, if not – like the artist, Hella – as an alternative way of life. Accompanied by old and new Sorbian sounds, along the filmmaker’s offscreen reflections, the many-voiced portrait of a nation within the nation emerges who reclaims its culture out of the local museums back into its everyday life.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Grit Lemke
Script
Grit Lemke
Cinematographer
Uwe Mann, Martin Farkas, Reiner Nagel
Editor
Sven Kulik
Producer
Annekatrin Hendel
Co-Producer
Thomas Beyer, Roman Nuck, Rolf Bergmann
Sound
Oliver Prasnikar
Sound Design
Michael Kaczmarek
Score
Walburga Walde, Izabela Kałduńska
Nominated for: Gedanken Aufschluss Prize, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, DEFA Sponsoring Prize, VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness
Filmstill Clown*esses

Clown*esses

Clown*esses
Jana Rothe
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
22 minutes
German,
Turkish,
English
Subtitles: 
English

Clown*esses are more than jesters; they hold a mirror up to society. They move between the worlds and like to break rules, albeit with a wink. At the same time, clown*esses are contradiction experts by nature, because they know on the one hand that life is far too short to be sad, and on the other hand use their art not only to entertain us but to make oppression and violence visible and attackable.

The artists portrayed in this film, for example, look closely at patriarchal structures and learned social behaviours. When Gözde in her unerring performances questions and satirises the images of women still prevalent in Turkey, this critique is rooted in her own experience – and that is precisely what makes it so funny. Lokke from Germany, on the other hand, emphasises the transformative aspect of clowning that allows them to try out different identities and characters, to refuse being pinned down and to ridicule stereotypes. Jana Rothe’s cogent short portrait presents these and other clownesque attitudes towards the world. It makes you wonder how in the world we ended up sacrificing fun and subversion to rationality in our daily lives.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Jana Rothe
Script
Jana Rothe
Cinematographer
Elena Friedrich
Editor
Jannis Lange
Producer
Lilli Thalgott, Maike Mia Höhne
Sound Design
Roman Vehlken
Score
Periklis Liakakis
World Sales
Ben Vandendaele
-
Gözde Atalay, Lokke Schlegel
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them
The Wind Is Taking Them
Ann Carolin Renninger
The big bang, tardigrades, humanity as a dying breed: A child researcher on a farm by the Baltic Sea has some astonishing thoughts about these things – and his curiosity about the present is infectious.
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them

The Wind Is Taking Them

Der Wind nimmt die mit
Ann Carolin Renninger
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
25 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

It is a stroke of luck when a film manages to simply observe the flow of life and almost casually show us the miracles found in life’s corners. Ann Carolin Renninger approaches people and things with great serenity and a palpable joy of searching for and finding images.

Rovin lives on a remote farm on the Baltic Sea and explores his surroundings with insatiable curiosity. He is interested in the universe, planets, unknown creatures – and in tardigrades, those tiny multicellular organisms that look like dust bags on legs and are real survival artists. Quite unlike humans, as Rovin points out, because the latter are sure to die out one day. He sees this as a logical fact, not a threat. And when you open yourself up to the grainy, earthy images and the calm narrative, you eventually stop wondering, too, why that should be a problem. After all, as long as the wind blows through the trees and scatters the tardigrades, everything is in good order. In addition to the captivatingly alert boy, Renninger meets Marie, who knows everything about rocks, and Christopher, who decorates a place with these rocks. They are all on a quest and every day find a piece of what one cannot hold onto: the present.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ann Carolin Renninger
Cinematographer
Ann Carolin Renninger, René Frölke
Editor
Ann Carolin Renninger
Producer
Ann Carolin Renninger
-
Zane Zlemesa, Miro Denck
Filmstill Make Up the World

Make Up the World

Die Ausstattung der Welt
Susanne Weirich, Robert Bramkamp
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
99 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

A tracking shot along the objects on the shelves of a film prop warehouse will trigger stories in our minds. The orange-coloured telephone takes us to the futuristic 1970s, plastic salmon canapés on artificial lemon slices invite us to a party, cut and thrust weapons herald mortal danger.

Experts from various prop companies explain their craft of storing and archiving. But under which keyword are folkloristic masks, African or pseudo-African objects to be catalogued? Enter Thelma Buabeng: The German actor and BIPoC activist slips into the documentary-like role of a doctoral student in Postcolonial Studies who does research for her thesis in the Prop Department Studio Babelsberg. From her perspective the objects take on a different context, enter into a dialogue and raise questions of their own. Meanwhile, a staff member is looking for a suitable frame for the Baroque painting “Portrait of an African Woman Holding a Clock” by Annibale Carracci. But can this frame even exist?

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Susanne Weirich, Robert Bramkamp
Script
Susanne Weirich, Robert Bramkamp
Cinematographer
Markus Koob
Editor
Janine Dauterich
Producer
Robert Bramkamp, Susanne Weirich
Co-Producer
Doris Hepp, Anne-Kathrin Brinkmann
Sound
Angelo Wemmje, Stefan Bück, David Jahn, Silvio Naumann, Robert Bramkamp
Sound Design
Silvio Naumann
Score
Georg Friedrich Händel
German Distributor
Inka Milke
Commissioning Editor
Doris Hepp
Funder
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH, MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein
Narrator
Thelma Buabeng
-
Janine Dauterich, Robert Bramkamp, Elena Friedrich, Susanne Weirich
Nominated for: Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill The Children of Korntal
The Children of Korntal
Julia Charakter
A sensitive examination of an abuse scandal in an evangelical children’s home in Baden-Württemberg. Victims’ testimonies are confronted with the shameful relativisations of the church.
Filmstill The Children of Korntal

The Children of Korntal

Die Kinder aus Korntal
Julia Charakter
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
90 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

In Korntal, a small town of 9,000 souls in Baden-Württemberg, hundreds of children were abused in the homes of the Evangelical Brethren since the 1950s. Forced labour, physical punishment and sexualised violence were the order of the day. To date, more than 150 former children have broken their silence, more than 80 perpetrators have been identified. Because the latter covered for each other and the neighbours looked away, the children were defenceless against the abuse for decades. When the scandal was exposed in 2013, the community and the village were hostile at first: That which must not be cannot be. It was only when the pressure from the outside grew that the community initiated a process of dealing with the scandal. But it is controversial: victims are re-traumatised, their statements doubted. To this day the children from Korntal are fighting for investigation and compensation.

The film focuses on the victims and avoids all dramatisation. What happened was dramatic enough, after all. When testimonies are only played as audio-recordings to protect the speakers, a simple animation fills the visual gaps. When those responsible today speak, the camera stays restrained and does not judge. That is not necessary anyway, because the inconceivable relativisation of the crimes speaks loudly enough – in Korntal as elsewhere.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Julia Charakter
Script
Julia Charakter
Cinematographer
Jonas Eckert
Editor
Jonas Eckert, Julia Charakter
Producer
Birgit Schulz
Sound Design
Volker Ambruster
Score
Leonard Küßner
Animation
Mick Mahler
Broadcaster
ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel, GeoTelevision
Funder
Film- und Medienstiftung NRW GmbH
Winner of: DEFA Sponsoring Prize
Filmstill One Hundred Four

One Hundred Four

Einhundertvier
Jonathan Schörnig
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
93 minutes
English,
German
Subtitles: 
English

The deadliest refugee route in the world claims thousands of lives every year. In the first half of 2023 alone, almost 2,000 people died in the Mediterranean because the European Union’s border policy systematically violates existing laws. Instead of helping shipwrecked persons, Frontex practices illegal pushbacks, finances the violent operations of the Libyan coast guard and takes massive action against private sea rescue missions that act where the EU fails. All this has been documented in the media and yet remains incomprehensible to all who were never forced to live through this situation themselves: How can one deny assistance to hundreds of people in peril of life, even threaten and criminalise the civilian helpers?

Jonathan Schörnig was concerned with this dilemma of lack of perception and decided to bring a sea rescue to the screen as a real time documentary to show how agonisingly long it takes to rescue 104 persons from a sinking rubber boat. One by one, step by step, the film follows the action with several parallel cameras. When the Libyan coast guard turn up, the situation comes to a head. The rescued persons and the crew are stuck on the high seas for days because no Mediterranean country gives them permission to dock. It is only after a heavy storm that one port takes pity on them. What sounds like a bad script is actually – daily – reality.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Jonathan Schörnig
Cinematographer
Jonathan Schörnig, Johannes Filous
Editor
Jonathan Schörnig, Moritz Petzold
Producer
Uwe Nitschke
Co-Producer
Adrian Then
Winner of: Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, Golden Dove Feature-Length Film (German Competition), Leipziger Ring, ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness
Filmstill For the Time Being

For the Time Being

For the Time Being
Nele Dehnenkamp
DOK im Knast 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
90 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

At the beginning Michelle Bastien-Archer shows and comments on photos of her wedding. The African-American and her childhood friend Jermaine were married in the unhospitable visitors’ hall of Sing Sing in 2007. He had been sentenced to 22 years to life for voluntary manslaughter in 1998. Ever since, she has been fighting tirelessly to prove his innocence. Now new documents have turned up that reinforce doubts about the trial’s decisive witness statement. Michelle becomes more confident. She presses even more determinedly ahead with her efforts to get Jermaine released. The camera is with her as if live, for almost a decade.

It feels like a thriller whose script was written by life and the U.S. American justice system. Daily life under exceptional circumstances, scenes from an unusual marriage. Timed phone calls from prison, countless visits to the lawyer, appearances at solidarity events for wrongly convicted African Americans. Michelle works as a house painter for the City of New York, raising her two children alone. We learn in passing that their biological father was the victim of a brutal crime. The portrait of a confident woman who shares her fears and hopes with us emerges.

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Nele Dehnenkamp
Cinematographer
Nele Dehnenkamp
Editor
Nele Dehnenkamp
Producer
Nele Dehnenkamp, Christine Duttlinger
Winner of: Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
Filmstill

getty abortions

getty abortions
Franzis Kabisch
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany,
Austria
2023
22 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

What images do we associate with abortion and why? Where do these images and the emotional scripts in our head come from? How do they influence women who (want to) have an abortion, how do they shape the general discussion? Franzis Kabisch’s personal desktop documentary investigates these questions with great precision, clarity and humour (yes, humour, too!).

In the process, she moves from early 2000s girls’ magazines to the late 19th century, sifts through troves of feminist knowledge and checks alleged cultural-historical facts (such as the discovery of hysteria in women) that haunt conventional wisdom to this day. At the end of the film, we have not only seen an exemplary examination of image politics and how they contributed to pushing the issue of abortion to the social sidelines and linking it with shame and guilt. Franzis Kabisch manages, almost “in the same breath,” to break up the false hubris of the documentary and demonstrate that the evidential value of filmic and photographic “testimonies” must always and implicitly be scrutinised. Ultimately, “cui bono?” – the question who profits, must be considered in every media-critical reflection – not just in the age of stock photos, editing software and AI but, strictly speaking, at the start of every documentary image production.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Franzis Kabisch
Script
Franzis Kabisch
Cinematographer
Franzis Kabisch
Editor
Franzis Kabisch
Producer
Franzis Kabisch
Sound Design
Franzis Kabisch, Katharina Pelosi, Laura Schick
Winner of: Golden Dove Short Film (German Competition)
Filmstill Gudow Nord

Gudow Nord

Gudow Nord
Sophia Schachtner
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
20 minutes
Ukrainian,
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

The motorway roars in the background, darkness lies over the service area. One truck driver smokes; another turns on the light in his sleeper cab. A summer Sunday is dawning, everything is standing still. Precisely designed detail shots induce in us a state of waiting. This is what life on the road can also look like. Cooking, dozing, staring into space. Hair is shorn short, words are exchanged. Polish pop songs resound from one of the cabs.

Life seems to have been tuned out. And yet it is happening. One of the men roams the forest, calls home. Suddenly a family is present in the images: The man remembers a swimming trip when the children were small. A strangely beautiful sight. He holds his mobile up in the air so the person on the other end of the line can hear the woodpecker.

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sophia Schachtner
Cinematographer
Marlon Weber
Editor
Sophia Schachtner
Producer
Sophia Schachtner
Sound Design
Patrick Dadaczynski
Nominated for: Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill Home Sweet Home
Home Sweet Home
Annika Mayer
Old Super 8 films show domestic happiness, the West German economic miracle, an idyllic home, grandmother Rose as a young woman at the centre. They do not show the violence in Rose’s marriage. Or do they?
Filmstill Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home
Annika Mayer
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
67 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

Rose and Rolf in the still-young FRG. He, 13 years her senior, was in the Second World War. She, who wants to have many children, accepts his proposal and leaves school. Rose watches Super 8 home movies from the fifties, sixties and seventies with her granddaughter Annika Mayer, the director of “Home Sweet Home”: her two boys in short leather pants, a home with a manicured front garden, dad coming home from work, mom cooking soup with sausage links. Rose does not recognise herself in these ideal images of the German economic miracle. This pretty young woman is a stranger to her.

Annika begins to ask questions. Together with her grandmother, she starts to look for traces of domestic violence in the latter’s marriage, which is invisible in the films. But Rose’s open narratives gradually make her experiences tangible. What biographical abysses may lurk behind Rolf’s proud smile? Judiciously deployed slow motion effects dissect the apparent domestic happiness. Atonal and hyperrealistic sounds lie under the distorted soundtrack. The birds sing all too happily, the idyll suddenly seems deceptive.

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Annika Mayer
Script
Annika Mayer
Cinematographer
Jakob Krese
Editor
Annika Mayer
Producer
Annika Mayer, Jakob Krese
Sound Design
Gaston Ibarroule
Score
Gaston Ibarroule
Nominated for: VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, DEFA Sponsoring Prize
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill Weeding
Weeding
Amelie Vierbuchen, Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape
Three filmmakers research the history of a chemical factory in Cologne-Kalk. Off- and online archives teach them the art of weeding out and throwing away, the art of daring the gap.
Filmstill Weeding
Filmstill Weeding
Filmstill Weeding

Weeding

Kassieren
Amelie Vierbuchen, Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
9 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

Three directors prepare a film about the chemical factory in the Cologne district of Kalk, on whose former grounds a shopping mall has been built. With some self-mockery they talk about their investigation and search for sources, their capitulation to the resistance of the material. Meanwhile, an archivist struggles with a mis-spooled 16mm film. Historical images splutter across the monitor of his analogue editing table. The silhouette of the factory with its towering chimneys is discernible. Site plans are shown, chemicals are blithely mixed. In an album, the filmmakers discover faded photos of female forced labourers. Suddenly, questions arise: Which stories are kept, which forgotten? Throwing away is part of his job, after all, the archivist explains in the finest Rhenish accent. What does this statement mean for the directing trio?

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Amelie Vierbuchen, Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape
Cinematographer
Amelie Vierbuchen, Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape
Editor
Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape
Producer
Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln
Sound Design
Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape
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

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

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
Filmstill Projekt

Projekt

Projekt
Dane Komljen
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany,
Nigeria
2023
25 minutes
English,
Yoruba,
Igbo,
Pigdin
Subtitles: 
German, English

A brief historical summary to begin with: The Lagos International Trade Fair centre was built in the mid-1970s, intended to serve as a marketplace for the non-aligned states. Archival footage and inserts alternate abruptly. While the news images of the time are rather propagandistic in tone, the inserts supply the sober facts.

Some fifty years later, vast tracts of the exhibition halls are under water – an ideal place for ferns and other humidity-loving plants. The initially static camera begins to move. Young craftsmen have converted one tract of the giant complex into workshops: they hammer, carpenter, repair bicycles, prepare meals. There is also a lot of activity outside the rambling site with its artificial lake; people are still trading; everyone is busy with something. A woman’s voice remembers bygone days while two young men ride a bicycle through an empty exhibition hall. A building may have lost its original purpose, but new and independent life has moved in. An open, trans-historic space in the making.

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dane Komljen
Script
Dane Komljen
Cinematographer
Dane Komljen, Kendo Osakawe
Editor
Dane Komljen
Producer
Zsuzsanna Kiràly
Sound Design
Jakov Munižaba
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill Showhouse
Showhouse
Anna Lauenstein, Max Hilsamer
“The world in one garden” – with this claim of omnipotence, the construction of the Botanical Garden in Dahlem began. The deeper one enters, the clearer the traces of imperialist thinking emerge.
Filmstill Showhouse

Showhouse

Schauhaus
Anna Lauenstein, Max Hilsamer
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
30 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

From a distance, the glass greenhouse looks like a spaceship which could have landed decades or only minutes ago. In any case, the Botanical Garden in Berlin seems to belong to another era. A group of young people are exploring, feeling plants, trees, and the building according to their very own criteria. Are they aliens? Are they imitating the expeditions of German explorers from the colonial period?

The commentary muses on the history of the place: at the end of the 19th century, work began on the construction of the new greenhouses of the Botanical Garden in Dahlem to bring the world to one garden. This idea formulated a claim of omnipotence, too. In the rambling park, the camera comes across the naturalistic statue of a semi-nude man sowing seeds. It was created by the sculptor Hermann Joachim Pagels, who was very successful under the Nazis. The deeper the film penetrates the thickets of this garden, the more traces of imperial and colonialist thinking come to light. But the Botanical Garden is also a utopian place. What if this greenhouse-spaceship were to take off to distant spheres again? Could the plants guarantee the survival of our species on other planets? But perhaps they have a different plan, a life of their own?

Anke Leweke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Anna Lauenstein, Max Hilsamer
Cinematographer
Max Hilsamer
Editor
Max Hilsamer, Anna Lauenstein
Sound
Adrian Gutzelnig
Score
Sebastian Eppner
-
Martina Weber
Nominated for: Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill Sick Girls
Sick Girls
Gitti Grüter
Is ADHS the fashionable diagnosis of a society geared towards efficiency and Ritalin the perfect doping agent? A personal journey to the heart of chaos and back – from a deliberately female perspective.
Filmstill Sick Girls

Sick Girls

Sick Girls
Gitti Grüter
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
79 minutes
German,
Swiss German
Subtitles: 
English

In recent years, the number of diagnoses of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has skyrocketed. What are the reasons? Does a society geared towards efficiency use the label ADHS to weed out anyone who does not fit its frames? What are the consequences of the fact that medication treatment has become almost ubiquitous? Could Ritalin and the like have become the doping of the performance society?

In their very personal documentary, Gitti Grüter, diagnosed with ADHS since puberty, sets out to find answers. Grüter talks to five women who have been officially diagnosed with this disorder about lack of concentration, impulsive behaviour, overstimulation, relationship problems, depression and insomnia. The open conversations gradually reveal how hard life can be for women with ADHS, because social stereotypes of femininity often prevent or delay the right diagnosis. Through the calculated use of filmic means, Grüter manages to convey to the audience a sense of the permanent and overpowering inner and outer chaos. Skilfully and with a generous dose of irony, they focus on how people suffering from ADHS are stigmatised – and not least on the role of gender stereotypes in this process. The conclusion is surprising and encouraging.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Gitti Grüter
Script
Gitti Grüter
Cinematographer
Lenn Lamster
Editor
Dan Gatzmaga
Producer
Christoph Holthof, Daniel Reich, Norman Bernien
Co-Producer
Sara Günter, ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel, Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Sound
Simon Ferber
Sound Design
Larissa Kischk, Eva Perhácová, Simon Schüler
Score
Valeriia Khazan, Felix Römer
German Distributor
Luna Selle
Nominated for: Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, Gedanken Aufschluss Prize, DEFA Sponsoring Prize, VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill The Gate
The Gate
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
How does the omnipresence of war affect life? The film looks for answers in the “American Way” of everyday life in the vast deserts of Utah, where the U.S. Army are testing new weapons systems.
Filmstill The Gate

The Gate

The Gate
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
88 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

The top-secret military testing facility Dugway lies in the barren desert of Utah. This is where the U.S. Army are rehearsing the wars of tomorrow. They specialise in nuclear weapons, chemical and biological agents, including anthrax and special nerve toxins. Even the Hiroshima pilots practiced on this site. Meeting at this war site far from all combat zones are: a heavily traumatised soldier, a military chaplain, a survivor of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and a father looking for his missing son. They are all proud of their American Way of Life and at the same time marked by the horrors of war. Because even in Utah, far from all actual fighting, it has indelibly inscribed itself – into the people’s souls and the collective memory of the U.S., for many decades the nation with the highest military budget.

This visually powerful film approaches its protagonists without prejudice, trying to learn how they navigate a social system that sees the use of violence as a right of freedom. What does it mean when guns and their attendant rituals are used to strengthen family cohesion, when shooting practice becomes a bonding exercise between fathers and sons? And when – unimpressed by the daily arms buildup – fear hovers over everything and seeps deeper into life every day?

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
Script
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
Cinematographer
Claire Pijman
Editor
Claire Pijman
Producer
Heino Deckert
Co-Producer
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
Sound
Michael David Beamish
Sound Design
Michael Kaczmarek, Adrian Lo
Score
Markus Aust
World Sales
Liselot Verbrugge
German Distributor
Michael Höfner
Nominated for: VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, DEFA Sponsoring Prize