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Filmstill 1976: Search for Life

1976: Search for Life

1976: Search for Life
Tess Martin
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Netherlands
2023
11 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

A new father takes his wife and daughter on a journey to his mother’s birthplace in Scotland. It is 1976 – the year in which NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 space probes land on the surface of Mars. They send images of an only vaguely explored area from a great distance, enabling a first look into the history of an alien planet. Like the NASA scientists, the small family are hoping that their journey will give them insights into the past, an understanding of the present situation and perhaps even the chance to anticipate the future.

Texts from the father’s travel diary, photos and video recordings are interwoven with visual and sound material from the NASA archives to form a multilayered narrative that navigates several decades of family history, cosmological questions and philosophical reflections. A filmic multiverse unfolds before us whose elementary particles oscillate between times and worlds, between reality and fiction.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tess Martin
Cinematographer
Matija Pekić
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill 27

27

27
Flóra Anna Buda
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
France,
Hungary
2023
11 minutes
Hungarian
Subtitles: 
English

It is Alice’s 27th birthday today. She lives in her old room in her parents’ apartment. Her mother coddles her like a little child. Her kid brother gets on her nerves. The only space for self-realisation and living out her sexual desires is in her imagination, if at all. For economic reasons, she and many other young people are denied the chance to live an independent life in their own four walls. So Alice has to endure the confinement.

On the night of her birthday, she goes pub-crawling with a buddy and dances, free at last for a few moments, at a party on the roof of a high-rise. Looking at the nocturnal city and sobering up after all the exuberance, though, her dilemma re-surfaces again: Where is her private space where body and soul can unfold unobserved? Haunting, colourful, with a fantastic soundtrack and full of eroticism, the film describes the depressing situation of a whole generation.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Flóra Anna Buda
Script
Flóra Anna Buda
Editor
Albane du Plessix
Producer
Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron, Gábor Osváth, Péter Benjámin Lukács
Sound
Péter Benjámin Lukács
Score
Mári Mákó, Rozi Mákó
Animation
Zoltán Koska, Gábor Mariai, Luca Tóth, Borbála Zétényi, Flóra Anna Buda
World Sales
Annabel Sebag
Artistic Design
Natália Andrade, Melinda Kádár
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
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 Breaker

Breaker

Branden
Juliane Ebner
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Germany
2023
16 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

Siren-like singing and rhythmic light reflections segue into a lyrical text and sketched silhouettes of coastlines and waves. Delicate lines and soft shadings on superimposed transparent foils form many-layered networks of shapes and structures. What is offscreen creeps into the frame through reflections and blends in with the visual design of the film. Then and now meet and merge into a poetic narrative about a childhood in Stralsund, at a time when the city was still part of the GDR. A fenced-in, circumscribed childhood, framed by nocturnal floodlights, the bawling of drunk sailors and the crumbling plaster of facades and walls gone grey. The narrator manages to leave this oppressive fortress behind, but she can never escape completely. The memories that have settled like grey dust on her interior will stay with her forever.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Juliane Ebner
Script
Juliane Ebner, Sophia Marie Schnoor
Cinematographer
Juliane Ebner
Editor
Juliane Ebner
Producer
Juliane Ebner
Sound
Alma Luise Schnoor
Sound Design
Manfred Miersch
Animation
Juliane Ebner
Narrator
Juliane Ebner
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Brother

Brother

Brother
Marcus Grysczok
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Germany
2022
2 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

In only ninety seconds Marcus Grysczok tells a touching personal story of loss and takes us to great emotional depths. Tune in: an electronically distorted outcry. The protagonist talks to himself and to someone who no longer lives in this world, but all the more in his heart. He looks for a way out of this state of powerlessness, assuming a stranger’s role, a free-roaming paper dog that runs between real shelves and across tables, races past people on black-and-white photographs and everyday objects, chases himself on a plate rim. The images convey a feeling of home – a home for memory and for life. Tune out? As soon as the dog stops, reality puts an end to this restless racket and brings the awareness of enduring loss. Poetic in language and design, the film formulates a moving but clear-eyed farewell to a brother.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Marcus Grysczok
Script
Marcus Grysczok
Cinematographer
Marcus Grysczok
Editor
Marcus Grysczok
Producer
Marcus Grysczok, Ana M. Vallejo Cuartas
Co-Producer
Marcus Grysczok
Sound
Roosmarijn Tuenter
Animation
Marcus Grysczok
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Compound Eyes of Tropical

Compound Eyes of Tropical

Re dai fu yan
Zhang Xu Zhan
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Taiwan
2022
17 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A Malay fairy tale tells of Sang Kancil, the wily mouse deer that crosses a river by persuading the crocodiles in it to form a bridge for him. Inspired by this story, Zhang Xu Zhan, one of Taiwan’s most distinguished young artists, in his latest stop-motion animation depicts the crossing of the river as a breakneck shaman dance in the deep jungle where acrobatic skill replaces cunning. Spurred on by drummers on the bank, guided by ringing bells, the costumed creature, half human, half animal, leaps from crocodile back to crocodile back, always in danger of losing more than feathers.

Despite the overwhelming complexity of the animated scenery, the hand-made papier-mâché figures recall the seductive power of traditional Javanese Wayang shadow theatre. Its fixed backdrops are transformed here into an extremely fluid world of continuous transformation and metamorphosis reflected in oddly shaped mirror shards, giving us an idea of what it would be like to see through compound eyes.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Zhang Xu Zhan
Script
Zhang Xu Zhan, Chi Chun Feng
Cinematographer
Zhang Xu Zhan, Kuan Yu Chen
Editor
Zhang Xu Zhan
Producer
Yu Chu Chan
Sound
Prairie WWWW, Zi Ming Feng
Score
Prairie WWWW
Animation
Zhang Xu Zhan, Raito Low, Liang Jie Chen
Winner of: Mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Cyclepaths

Cyclepaths

Cyclepaths
Anton Cla
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Belgium
2023
12 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

On the outskirts of the city, the new modern buildings are silent and the motorway bridge drones. Birds are circling in the sky, a young man, concealed by his hoodie, is riding his e-scooter along a park path. The only irritating element is the rifle over his shoulder.

Anton Cla’s film depicts a mood of high alert, while the disaster has in fact already happened. Unexplainable scenes that could not be more disconcerting and grow increasingly drastic unfold calmly. The screaming silence is decisively enhanced by the imperceptibly accumulating mixed drone of the daily sounds of a mechanised world: motorway, tramway, clicking indicators, pulsating emergency signals. What the soundscape adamantly refuses to deliver is a loud discharge that would release the tension. The suburban landscape is steeped in a red theatrical warning light, blurs restrict the view. The 3D computer design masks neither the artificiality nor the computer-based deformations of the images of a normality that has become a combat zone – the machine matrix seems to rule already.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Anton Cla
Producer
Anton Cla
Sound
Milan Van Doren
Animation
Anton Cla
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Drijf

Drijf

Drijf
Levi Stoops
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Belgium
2023
15 minutes
Dutch
Subtitles: 
English

She and him, naked on the holiday seas in the bright sun. It may sound idyllic, but it is hell for Aurora and Jeremy. In search of funny dolphins, the two are paddling without orientation in the limitless expanse of water, no land in sight. Complete with dangers from above and below in the shape of heat and sharks. And at the centre of events is a near-defunct relationship. The roles are well-practised and grating, uptight lust is satisfied only solo.

Instead of roaring waves, it is above all the relentless silence of the sea surrounding them that provides the tension of the film. It is occasionally released in brilliant miniatures, for example a witty argument, or clumsy physical comedy. Another time, we are shocked by action-filled horror moments triggering absurd chain reactions. Whether it is the glaring light on the brutally calm water and the clueless couple, the visual fumes of decay one can almost smell, or a super dynamic dive – Levi Stoops’ direction is magnificent and timed with utmost precision.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Levi Stoops
Script
Levi Stoops
Cinematographer
Camiel Hermans, Sarah Menheere, Karolien Raeymaekers, Levi Stoops
Editor
Levi Stoops
Producer
Annemie Degryse
Sound
Paulo Rietjens, Arnout Colaert
Sound Design
Paulo Rietjens
Score
Mick Lemaire
Animation
Camiel Hermans, Sarah Menheere, Karolien Raeymaekers, Levi Stoops
World Sales
Annabel Sebag
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
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

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

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
Filmstill fur

fur

fur
Zhen Li
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
USA
2022
7 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

Biology lesson. On one side the teacher in the light of the entomology projection, on the other the classroom in semi-darkness. Attention is slackening. Adolescent daydreaming: The boy at the desk in front is actually quite cute. The fingers want to run off. Still, rather touch only oneself at first. But then there is a spark …

Having a crush, what a beautiful and intense, but equally fleeting and sobering moment. Eyes, nose, ear, mouth and hands go on their first physical explorations, breathtaking, deviant or repulsive. Zhen Li observes with microscopic precision and magnificently captures this exceptional state of mind with different animation techniques. Charcoal drawings with smeared marks, furry waves of mould, intricately animated bodies and buzzing, sticky sounds circumscribe the sensual surge.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Zhen Li
Script
Zhen Li
Producer
Zhen Li
Sound Design
Zhen Li
Score
Marc Riordan
Animation
Zhen Li
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award, Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
Filmstill It’s Just a Whole

It’s Just a Whole

It’s Just a Whole
Bianca Scali
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Germany
2023
10 minutes
French,
German,
English
Subtitles: 
English

In a sterile white examination room, a young woman is asked by a doctor to undress completely. An exhaustive examination of the protagonist’s skin begins during which every centimetre, the palm of her hand, the sole of her foot, the back and also the genital area are closely scrutinised. The doctor meticulously probes every nook and cranny of the young woman’s outer shell until she is able to identify a suspicious birthmark. A timely appointment to remove the mole is made.

Exposed and irritated, the protagonist finds herself confronted with her fears about the surgery and the after-effects of the examination. A tiny birthmark triggers an inner process: an analysis of her own body and the control others are allowed over it. Fragile lines on scarred paper and a tonal design that gives us goosebumps make us participate intensely in her emotions.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Bianca Scali
Cinematographer
Markus Ott
Editor
Revan Sarikaya
Producer
Paulina Larson
Sound Design
Vincent Egerter
Score
Demian Martin
Animation
Bianca Scali, Shadab Shayegan
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Johnny & Me

Johnny & Me

Johnny & Me
Katrin Rothe
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Germany,
Switzerland,
Austria
2023
100 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

As she visits an exhibition, a graphic designer is mesmerised by the photocollages of the anti-fascist John Heartfield, who became known as the “montage dada.” Stefanie falls through a vortex of paper and photo snippets into an old-fashioned looking studio. A pair of scissors – an analogue tool she herself hardly uses – attracts her attention. She begins to cut a figure out of cardboard, a miniature version of the artist who at once addresses her and explores his life and works with her. The studio turns out to be a living archive that ceaselessly produces documents and information about Johnny. The research gives Stefanie, stressed and disappointed by her job, new motivation, and the courage to choose a different path as a designer.

Both protagonists have the same profession and find themselves facing the same questions about the significance and recognition of their work. Both are struggling in their own way with frustration and fears, caused by the different social and political circumstances of their generations. The different elements of this animated documentary come together in a dialogic collage that reflects on the mission of art, its educative and critical power, and its potential to bring about changes in our society.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Katrin Rothe
Script
Katrin Rothe
Cinematographer
Thomas Eirich-Schneider, Richard Marx, Manon Pichón
Editor
Hannes Starz
Producer
Gunter Hanfgarn, Andrea Ufer, Ralph Wieser, Sereina Gabathuler, Werner Schweizer
Co-Producer
Rolf Bergmann, Carolin Mayer, Gabriela Bloch Steinmann
Sound
Stephanie Stremler, Manuel Harder, Michael Hatzius, Dorothee Carls
Sound Design
Lukas Brandes
Score
Micha Kaplan, Thomas Mävers
Animation
Lydia Günther, Caroline Hamann, Tonina Matamalas, Anne-Sophie Raemy, Benjamin Swiczinsky
World Sales
Elina Kewitz
German Distributor
Joachim Kühn
Artistic Design
Amelie Couchet, Malte Stein, Lisa Neubauer, Wolf Matzl, Birgit Scholin, Rosanne Janssens, Jonatan Schwenk, Kerstin Zemp, Werner Kernebeck, Gyula Szabó, Cornelia Freche, Lisa Sinram, Theresa Grysczok, Mandy Müller, Melanie Hauff, Edoardo Pasquini, Cornelia Diomis
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Filmstill Knit’s Island
Knit’s Island
Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h
A documentary film crew spends 963 hours in a video game interviewing gamers. Little by little, they drop their masks and give insights into their “real” lives.
Filmstill Knit’s Island

Knit’s Island

Knit’s Island
Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
France
2023
95 minutes
French,
English
Subtitles: 
English

Running. Rapid breathing. A shot in the silence. The opening strikes the keynotes: caution, curiosity, thrills. A documentary film team spend 963 hours on the adventure playground of the video game DayZ. Online gamers explore the territory of a post-Soviet disaster province, permanently exposing themselves to the risk of being killed by hostile gamers. Despite their “press” badges, Guilhem, Ekiem and Quentin, as avatars, are subject to the same rules when they interview the gamers in their virtual world. The community is heterogenous: marauding gangs, cowboys with Samaritan ethics, curious wanderers.

Reality is never far away. The gamer “Feesh” is torn from her console during the interview because her IRL (in real life) child is crying. In the course of their conversation, “Iris” shoots her “toy”, a prisoner, before the eyes of the shocked documentary team – a conflict of documentary work opens up. “Knit’s Island” is a disturbing, melancholy to heartwarming tour of chance meetings and friendships of sleepless persons in the artificial world. Some avatars constantly twitch nervously and grotesquely because they act out darkest desires. Others “trick the game” and enter fascinating techno-psychedelic spheres. Game-playing and role-playing persona – sometimes they are one, sometimes two.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h
Script
Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h
Cinematographer
Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h
Editor
Nicolas Bancilhon
Producer
Boris Garavini
Sound Design
Mathieu Farnarier
Score
Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Marc Siffert
World Sales
Wouter Jansen
Filmstill La Perra

La Perra

La Perra
Carla Melo Gampert
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Colombia,
France
2023
14 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Breasts lifted, bottom tight, feathers smoothed. She is ready for her date. But her daughter clings and refuses to let her go to this as yet incomprehensible, repulsive ritual of desire. Very soon the fully-fledged adolescent will indulge in sexual lust herself … and experience disappointments. In the conflicted world of the two women, men evade partnership and fatherhood. The faithful bitch offers the only support.

As in her previous film, Carla Melo Gampert transfers her impressive but uncompromising analysis of family relationships to the lives of wading birds. Human traits show through in the anatomy, but the bird’s bodies including their feathers and sounds lend themselves perfectly to the apt exaggeration of emotions. Delicate strokes turn into cuttingly sharp movement lines of the animal characters, both in their erotically crude acts of love and their “hands-on” disputes. Soft splashes of watercolour glow incandescently in the heat of lust and warningly in the hopeless fury.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Carla Melo Gampert
Editor
Juan Sebastián Quebrada
Producer
Julie Billy, Naomi Denamur, Franco Lolli, Capucine Mahé
Sound
Juanma López, Daniel Giraldo
Animation
Carla Melo Gampert, Andrea Muñoz Álvarez
World Sales
Elise Notseck
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Margarethe 89

Margarethe 89

Margarethe 89
Lucas Malbrun
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
France
2023
18 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

The end of real-socialist oppression, doomed love and tacit double morals unfold in colourful felt-pen images and clear lines. Leipzig, 1989. The city still belongs to the blue shirts of the Free German Youth, there is still talk of a flourishing country in festive speeches. Locked away in a mental hospital for belonging to the Leipzig punk scene and abused as “belonging to an enemy faction” that undermines the GDR from within: Margarethe can stand it. Ultimately, however, the lack of briquettes and the cold water in the communal shower make the young woman dream of being close to her boyfriend Heinrich. While the protests in the streets are growing, Heinrich and his band play church-organised punk concerts that hint at the prospect of freedom. But Stasi spies are more present than ever – until the newly gained freedom to travel scatters them to the winds along with the lights of the fireworks.

Jana Kraft

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Lucas Malbrun
Script
Lucas Malbrun, Marie Larrivé
Cinematographer
Lucas Malbrun
Editor
Clara Saunier, Vincent Tricon
Producer
Nicolas de Rosanbo, Céline Vanlint
Sound
Elodie Thevenin
Sound Design
Quentin Romanet
Score
Mael Oudin
World Sales
Miguel Español Celiméndiz
Artistic Design
Morgan Curt, Hippolyte Cupillard, Jean-Baptiste Peltier, Charlie Belin, Jonas Schloesing, Daria Skripka, Yehor Bondarenko, Angelina Dorozhinskaia
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill Moonless

Moonless

Chandraheen
Adheep Das
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
India
2023
24 minutes
Hindi
Subtitles: 
English

On a moonless night, a cheeky bull escapes from his herd. He dashes through fields and over hills until he finally stops at a pond, where a piece of paper on which a poem is emerging attaches itself to him. The bull shakes off the paper and sneaks into town, where he watches people at their nocturnal business. He witnesses a police investigation, listens in on two truck drivers and observes the theft of a bus stop shelter. All these experiences are accompanied by the narrator’s poetic comments and culminate in a hilarious singing sequence, complete with a dance and performance number by the bull.

Meanwhile, the people in the town are in an uproar about the undetectable moon. They search, discuss and protest. But the moon stays missing – until the bull transforms himself at the end of his journey.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Adheep Das
Script
Avanti Basargekar
Editor
Adheep Das
Producer
Tamali Bhattacharya
Sound
Shivpal Singh Kang
Sound Design
Shivpal Singh Kang
Score
Shivpal Singh Kang
Animation
Adheep Das
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award