Film Archive

Camera Lucida 2022
Filmstill Danube
Danube
Agustina Pérez Rial
This brilliantly executed montage of historical footage and personal assumptions condenses into a possible history of events at the 9th Mar del Plata International Film Festival in 1968.
Filmstill Danube

Danube

Danubio
Agustina Pérez Rial
Camera Lucida 2022
Documentary Film
Argentina
2021
62 minutes
Spanish,
English,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

Argentine director Agustina Pérez Rial’s debut feature-length film about the ninth edition of the International Film Festival in her native city of Mar del Plata from 1968 seems to find an uncommonly balanced solution to the primal dilemma of documentary storytelling. In an impressively brilliant montage of archive material, a story is constructed which, according to the director herself, is not necessarily true, but realistic.

Historical black and white photos of captivating beauty, film footage from various sources and documents from the now open archives of the surveillance authorities of the time are counteracted by a supposed witness report – de facto a female voice from offscreen. Pérez Rial is in subtle and intelligent control of her cinematic tools, pulling out all the stops: documentary and fiction, historical and contemporary, aesthetic, trivia and anecdotes. On the one hand, the meticulously researched facts unearth a forgotten microfacet of the Cold War, complete with militarisation, persecution and paranoia. On the other hand, they show a film festival as a node of ideologies and describe it as a highly politicised place. This opens unexpected spaces of reflection for the role assigned to such a cultural event – historical or current.
Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Agustina Pérez Rial
Script
Paulina Bettendorff
Cinematographer
Pupeto Mastropasqua
Editor
Natalia Labaké
Producer
Agustina Pérez Rial
Co-Producer
Fiørd estudio, En otro orden de cosas
Sound
Manuel Embalse
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Everything That Is Forgotten in an Instant

Todo lo que se olvida en un instante
Richard Shpuntoff
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Argentina
2020
71 minutes
Spanish,
English
Subtitles: 
English, Spanish

Everyday observations from Buenos Aires, shot on black-and-white 16mm film material, alternate with twenty-year-old Hi8 colour shots from New York. The perspective of a father who collects memories for his daughters. The perspective of a son who records his father’s reminiscences. Richard Shpuntoff’s multi-layered montage film is a clever essay on cultural identities, on cities and languages.

When we watch a subtitled film, we look, listen and read at the same time. We assume that the three levels are congruent or at least add up to form a whole. “Even the best subtitles suck”, the subtitles of this film announce, however, because “You are still reading instead of looking at the images.” Translating means rewriting. Therefore, “Everything That Is Forgotten in an Instant” tells parallel stories in images, words and writing: of urban development and power structures in two distant metropolises, of identity and its transgenerational transfer, of three continents and three languages which draw equally dividing and connecting lines through a family. The insecurity caused by the discrepancy between the filmic elements turns into a school of selective perception. Images, languages and texts are no dictate, after all: They leave us a choice.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Richard Shpuntoff
Cinematographer
Richard Shpuntoff
Editor
Richard Shpuntoff
Producer
Nadia Jacky
Sound
Luciana Foglio
Filmstill Landscapes

Landscapes

Los paisajes
Hernán Fernández
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Argentina
2022
65 minutes
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Valentyna and her bed-ridden mother live on a small farm surrounded by the evergreen, lush flora of the rain forest. The works and thoughts of the poet and the artist, though, are filled with the landscapes of their old home, Ukraine. Memories of snow and birch trees, thistles and orchids, vegetable gardens and their animal residents come to life in Tamara’s poems and Valentyna’s drawings.

Life flows quietly in the small house in the middle of nowhere. Valentyna takes care of the few animals, milks the cows, makes cheese, cares for her mother. The photos on the chest of drawers, the allusions to the Chernobyl disaster only hint at why the two left Ukraine a long time ago. But what they left behind still lives in exile. One wonders whether she, the celebrated poet, still remembers her writings? Mother and daughter are as gentle with each other as the film’s gaze on the two women, their animals and surroundings. Without a trace of nostalgia, cinematographer Mariano Maximovicz’s images let us see not only the beauty of the landscapes we live in but also of those that live on in our minds.
Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hernán Fernández
Script
Constanza Sandoval, Hernán Fernández
Cinematographer
Mariano Maximovicz
Editor
José Goyeneche
Producer
Maca Herrera Bravo
Sound
Julián Caparrós
Score
Serguéi Rajmáninov
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Kids DOK 2020
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Little Forest
Paulina Muratore
For many years, Mizu takes care of a tree, cherishes it and grows up with it. When a big flood threatens her life, she takes refuge in its crown.
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Little Forest

Bosquecito
Paulina Muratore
Kids DOK 2020
Animated Film
Argentina
2020
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

When Mizu discovers a small plant in the forest, she goes there every day to water it. The years pass by, the little seedling becomes a big tree, Mizu a big girl, and one day they are both grown-up. But then a big rain comes that seems to go on forever. When the forest is flooded, Mizu must save herself. She takes refuge in her tree.

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Paulina Muratore
Script
Paulina Muratore
Producer
Facundo Corsini
Sound
Manuel Yeri Racig
Score
Rodrigo Carazo
Animation
Agustín Touriño
Time to Act! 2022
Filmstill Oro Blanco
Oro Blanco
Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez
The downside of e-mobility: Because big corporations are mining lithium for batteries in the Argentinian salt deserts, the indigenous population have no water to live.
Filmstill Oro Blanco

Oro Blanco

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

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

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

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

The Dependents

En la luna es el día
Sofía Brockenshire
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Argentina,
Canada
2022
90 minutes
English,
Korean,
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

For thirty years, Sofía Brockenshire’s father travelled the world as an official of the Canadian Immigration Service, his family always by his side. Diaries and other contemporary documents show the numerous relocations, the destinations in South Korea, India, in South and Central American countries. The result is a detailed mosaic of memories and audiovisual snippets that tries to take not only the civil servant’s perspective, but also that of his wife and children.

When asked where they originally came from, the Brockenshire kids answer cleverly: from the suitcases. Because they travel with them year after year, always prepared to have to leave a place they just moved to. The life of the family is determined by the Canadian authorities, they seem to have practically no say in the matter. Neil Brockenshire’s views on his professional career are ambivalent: full of gratitude and certain to have helped people, but also thoughtful and occasionally resentful. In her film, Sofía Brockenshire re-assembles what was scattered across the globe over the decades: photos, thoughts, desires. “The Dependents” is a personal portrait and something of a reflection about the existence as a professional expat in a world that has no borders for some and nothing but obstacles for others.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sofía Brockenshire
Cinematographer
Sofía Brockenshire
Editor
Sofía Brockenshire
Producer
Sofía Brockenshire
Sound
Julian Flavin
Sound Design
Julian Flavin
Nominated for: Leipziger Ring, Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize
International Competition 2020
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The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi
Laura Citarella, Mercedes Halfon
When the poet Juana Bignozzi dies, she bequeaths the intellectual property of her work to the young author Mercedes, along with prosaic but even more poetic duties.
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The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi

Las poetas visitan a Juana Bignozzi
Laura Citarella, Mercedes Halfon
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Argentina
2019
90 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

A poet’s life ends and a film begins to carry on her legacy, prosaically at first. When Juana Bignozzi dies in 2015, the intellectual property rights to her work pass to the young author Mercedes Halfon – as the aged lady had decreed. But Mercedes also inherits a refrigerator and a lot of junk that must be cleared out of the orphaned apartment in Buenos Aires. Together with young filmmakers, she transforms the duty into a poetically fulfilling project.

The result is not only an unusual but actually a non-portrait of a poet – and perhaps not even a result. Rather, it is a continuously growing equation of superimposed faces, texts and images that refuses to simply work out. They look at each other as if in rear-view mirrors: Juana Bignozzi, who speaks to the young from her writings full of humble reverence, and her young female admirers who, reading, filming and browsing through Bignozzi’s legacy, feel almost embarrassed by these declarations of love. What confidence the deceased had in them! What tremendous expectations she had of those whose mother or grandmother she could have been! Their own poetic achievements seem too half-hearted to Mercedes and Laura to ever live up to such advance praise. But even as they doubt, they are already deep into it.
Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Laura Citarella, Mercedes Halfon
Cinematographer
Inés Duacastella, Agustín Mendilaharzu
Editor
Miguel de Zuviría, Alejo Moguillansky
Producer
Ingrid Pokropek
Sound
Valeria Fernández, Marcos Canosa
Winner of: Silver Dove (International Competition)
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The Still Side

El lado quieto
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Philippines,
South Korea,
Argentina,
Mexico
2021
70 minutes
Spanish,
English
Subtitles: 
English

The Mexican island of Capaluco was once home to a flourishing holiday resort. Now it is deserted. The tides are chipping away at the ruins of the amusement park and hotel complex. Sensory explorations of the terrain meet tales of a mythical sea monster from the Philippines that ended up here. Beguiling science fiction in the mirror of post-humanist theory.

“Welcome to Capaluco, the only all-inclusive island in the world! A place where fun is guaranteed for the whole family,” echoes from the loudspeakers. Gaudy dolphin sculptures stare into space. A crumbling Nestlé emblem reminds us of the glory days of an out-of-date civilization. Miko Revereza and Carolina Fusilier stage their location as an in-between place where the past reverberates and the future pushes its way in. In the meticulous observation of formations and textures, architecture and nature begin to converge. Is that still the droning of a radio mast or is it the ocean? The two directors speculate from offscreen who will be next to make use of the relics of the human empire in the relay race of the species.
Sarina Lacaf

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier
Script
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier
Cinematographer
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier, Mateo Fusilier
Editor
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier
Producer
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier
Sound
Miko Revereza
Score
Miko Revereza, Carolina Fusilier
Animation
Carolina Fusilier
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Vicenta

Vicenta
Darío Doria
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Argentina
2020
69 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

A human tragedy on the backdrop of a legal and medical scandal which in 2007 lead to legal action against the Argentinean state before the UN Human Rights Commission and a verdict of guilty in 2011. The mentally and physically handicapped 16-year-old girl Laura had been raped by her uncle in 2006. But a legal abortion which had already been officially granted at the request of her mother, Vicenta, was opposed by lawyers and doctors.

“Vicenta” conveys the details of this truly incredible imposition in the form of a fable in which plasticine figures seem rooted to the spot in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Only the camera moves through this scenery, usually in travellings across the set-up. Very occasionally excerpts of newscasts, broadcast from small monitors on the stage of this “puppet show”, authenticate the narrative. And yet the whole spectrum of conceivable feelings between being openly paralysed with shock and proud self-empowerment of the mother who stubbornly fights for justice for herself and her daughter is conveyed and made comprehensible. In the above-mentioned UN ruling, the Argentinean state was accused of having fundamentally disregarded the recognised right to freedom from inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment in the case of Laura and her mother Vicenta.
Ralph Eue

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Darío Doria
Script
Luis Camardella, Florencia Gattari, Darío Doria
Cinematographer
Darío Doria
Editor
Darío Doria
Producer
Felicitas Raffo, Pamela Livia Delgado
Co-Producer
Virginia Croatto
Sound
Federico Esquerro
Score
Ezequiel Menalled
Animation
Darío Doria
Narrator
Liliana Herrero
Winner of: FIPRESCI Prize