Film Archive

Hommage: Punto y Raya 2025
Filmstill A Silent Sound
A Silent Sound
Maï Calon
Familiar movements turn vibrating paper pyramids into living creatures that timidly explore their surroundings. Will they find the courage to leave the screen?
Filmstill A Silent Sound

A Silent Sound

A Silent Sound
Maï Calon
Hommage: Punto y Raya 2025
Animated Film
Belgium
2021
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

As light as a feather, this film creates an illusion of movement using hundreds of minimally different paper pyramids. Image by image, one geometric body is replaced by the next until an impression of deformation is generated. The delicate vibration created by the exchange of the pyramids and not least the changes of position in space makes them come to life.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Maï Calon
Filmstill Café Kuba

Café Kuba

Café Kuba
David Shongo
International Competition Documentary Film 2025
Documentary Film
DR Congo,
Belgium
2025
29 minutes
Lingala,
French
Subtitles: 
English

A mobile coffee truck becomes a cinema apparatus that seems to enable the recording of what is often overlooked and even more often overheard. David Shongo’s nocturnal portrait of Kinshasa in the aftermath of the M23 violent excesses of February 2025 in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is an idiosyncratic and undercover exploration of a fragile city that has been exposed to a lot of historic and present traumatisation and continues to be marked by instability.
To raise the question of Kinshasa’s future, the Congolese artist and composer re-interprets film-historical concepts and adds new facets: With his practice of radical listening and questioning the limits of seeing, based on strong images, complex sound and inventive performative staging, he creates his own form of “fugitive cinema”.

Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
David Shongo
Script
David Shongo
Cinematographer
David Shongo, Kevin Booto
Editor
David Shongo
Producer
David Shongo, Tommy Simoens
Co-Producer
Olga Sherazade Pitton, Tommy Simoens
Sound
Djo Wamba
Sound Design
David Shongo
Key Collaborator
Divin Sky Kayanga
Filmstill Clot

Clot

Klonter
Levi Stoops
International Competition Animated Film 2025
Animated Film
Belgium
2025
15 minutes
Dutch
Subtitles: 
English

Contemplating your naked body, drenched in tomato sauce, on a frozen pizza – that is the epitome of alienated wage work. Especially if it is the mass product whose quality has to be checked hundreds of times a day at the assembly line. Is it this alienation, the multiple daily consumption of precisely this meal or simply the absence of significant human relationships that make Frankie feel terminally ill and ready to say goodbye to an existence he feels is worthless and empty? Nobody cares, until his body transforms into a wild planet where evolution happens in fast-forward mode: the genesis of life, miniature Frankies performing absurd penis dances, cannibalism, Darwinism, mutual destruction, the eradication of other species – and finally the Frankie planet itself burning out.
Levi Stoops makes us laugh out loud – and yet we feel the bitter taste of self-destruction on our tongue. Will Frankie have the courage to risk a change of life after this apocalyptic experience? Or does the system have him so firmly in its claws that wholesome nature documentaries of exotic flowers are comfort enough – instead of cooking shows where the stone-baked pizzas are tossed into the air with verve?

Irina Rubina

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Levi Stoops
Script
Levi Stoops
Editor
Levi Stoops
Producer
Annemie Degryse
Sound
Paulo Rietjens
Sound Design
Paulo Rietjens
Score
Wiet Lengeler
Animation
Camiel Hermans, Sarah Menheere, Karolien Raeymaekers, Neyrouz Jemour, Jana Leeuwerck
World Sales
Annabel Sebag
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award, Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
Winner of: Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
Filmstill Fantastique

Fantastique

Fantastique
Marjolijn Prins
Young Eyes 2025
Documentary Film
Belgium,
France,
Netherlands
2025
71 minutes
Susu,
French
Subtitles: 
English, German

Fanta is 14 years old and lives in Conakry, the capital of Guinea in West Africa. Besides school and her household chores, she spends every free minute training at the acrobatics circus. One day, the return of the country’s big star is announced. Balla Moussa Bangoura, founder of the Amoukanama Circus Company, is returning from an international tour and now plans to rehearse a new show with his troupe. Training gets harder, because only the best will be in it at the end.
Of course, Fanta is determined to give everything to be one of the few girls travelling the country with Balla Moussa Bangoura. Every day, she is torn between caring for her sick mother, housework, schoolwork and what she thinks she loves best. Supported by her family on the one hand, striving to fulfil all expectations on the other, Fanta begins to doubt: What does she really want? Marjolijn Prins delivers the atmospherically dense portrait of an extraordinary girl, connected by rousing musical numbers, spectacular acrobatics and dream-like acting sequences.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Marjolijn Prins
Cinematographer
Johan Legraie
Editor
Ciska Slowack
Producer
Ellen De Waele, Mirna Everhard
Co-Producer
Florent Coulon, Felix Salgado, Ineke Kanters, Lisette Kelders, Anton Iffland Stettner, Eva Kuperman
Score
Johanna Beaussart
Nominated for: Young Eyes Film Award
Winner of: Young Eyes Film Award
Filmstill Imago

Imago

Imago
Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2025
Documentary Film
France,
Belgium
2025
109 minutes
Chechen,
Russian,
Georgian
Subtitles: 
English

A piece of land awaits Déni Oumar Pitsaev in the Pankisi Gorge, a Chechen enclave in the Georgian part of the Caucasus. His mother bought it for him, hoping to bring her son, who was socialised in Western Europe, back to his Chechen roots. When he arrives, he realises that the gift comes with strings attached: Relatives and friends from the neighbourhood constantly ask when the 40-year-old Déni with his receding hair intends to start a family. When he counters with his own vision – building a treehouse for adults ten metres from the ground, a childhood dream – he triggers complex debates about the relationship between the individual and society and what historical conditions it is subject to: The region is deeply scarred by the effects of the Chechen War, the wounds extending even to his estranged relationship with his father. In all this, Pitsaev’s manner of confrontation is always extremely delicate, never turning into an attack. With expert curiosity, he approaches a world that is both completely alien and home to him.

Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Cinematographer
Sylvain Verdet, Joachim Philippe
Editor
Laurent Sénéchal, Dounia Sichov
Producer
Alexandra Mélot
Co-Producer
Anne-Laure Guégan, Géraldine Sprimont
Sound
Marie Paulus, André Rigaut, Joseph Squire
Sound Design
Marie Paulus, André Rigaut, Joseph Squire, Hélène Clerc-Denizot, Emmanuel De Boissieu
World Sales
Jing Xu
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Lights, Haze

Lights, Haze

Lights, Haze
Tata Managadze
International Competition Animated Film 2025
Animated Film
Georgia,
Portugal,
Belgium,
Finland
2024
8 minutes
Georgian,
English
Subtitles: 
English

Only light lifts the outlines of the world from darkness. In cyanotype, light-sensitive material is used to make white drawings materialize on a blue background. Tata Managadze challenges the light-sensitivity of our mind. She uses reflections and mirrors to expose the sensitive, gossamer-thin material of association in ways that make ephemeral memories and emotions visible. The poem at the beginning tells us how soothing and at the same time brutal her protagonist – light – can be. Like children in a playground, we are seduced by and forever searching for the dance of lights. Flower patterns on the dishes in the sink begin to spin when our eyelids grow heavy and sleep is approaching. Everything moves. In the transitory state between waking and dreaming, a different kind of life stirs in the prefabricated building estate: The stars of the restaurant leap from the sign and scratch traces into the wall. Or are these scars that must still heal? Perhaps scars from the Soviet era?
Again and again, well-known fragments are re-assembled. This non-narrative animated documentary takes us on a spiral of remembrance to an untraceable origin, building a bridge to our childhood ability to find magic in the most mundane things.

Irina Rubina

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tata Managadze
Producer
RE:Anima European Joint Master in Animation
Sound
Jose Salgado, Irakli Margishvili
Sound Design
Jose Salgado, Irakli Margishvili
Score
Jose Salgado
Animation
Tata Managadze
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Young Eyes 2025
Filmstill Mary Anning
Mary Anning
Marcel Barelli
Mary is a 12-year-old girl living in the 19th century: inquisitive, persistent and fascinated by fossils. An entertaining and warm-hearted biopic about one of the first female palaeontologists.
Filmstill Mary Anning

Mary Anning

Mary Anning
Marcel Barelli
Young Eyes 2025
Animated Film
Switzerland,
France,
Belgium
2025
72 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

We are travelling back in time to the early 19th century on the south coast of England. This is where Mary Anning lives, a 12-year-old girl who is inquisitive, persistent and fascinated by fossils. She spends every free minute at the beach to look for the fossilised remains of long extinct animal species in the strata of her hometown’s coastal cliffs. Her father, too, is an enthusiast and earns a little extra for his family by selling fossils. When he disappears after the collapse of a cliff, Mary’s life is shaken. All that her father leaves behind is a mysterious drawing whose meaning Mary only gradually makes out. She is determined to uncover the secret together with unexpected allies. An entertaining and warm-hearted biopic about one of the first female palaeontologists.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Marcel Barelli
Script
Marcel Barelli, Pierre-Luc Granjon, Magali Pouzol
Cinematographer
Marjolaine Perreten
Editor
Marcel Barelli, Julie Brenta
Producer
Nicolas Burlet
Co-Producer
Arnaud Demuynck, Tatjana Kozar
Sound
Jérôme Vittoz
Sound Design
Jérôme Vittoz
Score
Shyle Zalewski
Animation
Maëlle Chevallier
World Sales
Lisa Lejeune
Nominated for: Young Eyes Film Award
Hommage: Punto y Raya 2025
Filmstill Moving Moments (6 Moments, 19 Fragments)
Moving Moments (6 Moments, 19 Fragments)
Gwendolyn Lootens
A gorgeous collection of tiny moving image moments full of wisdom, wit, and poetry. Viewed through a magnifying glass, the small things offer room for surprises – and great insights.
Filmstill Moving Moments (6 Moments, 19 Fragments)

Moving Moments (6 Moments, 19 Fragments)

Moving Moments (6 Moments, 19 Fragments)
Gwendolyn Lootens
Hommage: Punto y Raya 2025
Animated Film
Belgium,
Netherlands
2023
6 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A brilliant and highly poetic collection of tiny moving image moments which offers aesthetic delights through cleverly chosen camera angles, framing, lighting, montage and the materials used. This archive of trifles remains silent. The eyes begin to hear, the sound is generated in the mind. Simply enchanting.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Gwendolyn Lootens
Filmstill Murmuration

Murmuration

Zwermen
Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger
International Competition Animated Film 2025
Animated Film
Netherlands,
Belgium
2025
13 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

Flocks of starlings are circling above the retirement home. These impressive natural spectacles are called murmurations because from a distance they sound like collective murmuring. Not everyone hears or sees them, but the old man notices. Sometimes the starlings send a single twittering messenger to his window. Often, the birds are more present to him than his fellow humans, more present than the old demented fellow resident who regularly waters a still life of flowers, more present than his neighbours in the amateur choir. And then it happens: The old man finds a first feather in his hair, then a second, then several. Soon he grows a beak so that instead of singing he can only caw.
The last phase of life we witness here is lovingly animated: The puppet animation was created with gauze bandages, a beautiful approach to the vulnerability that comes with aging. The farewell to life shown here is devoid of pathos, not even that over-produced grief we know from many narratives of dying. Even the retirement home is a completely mundane place, neutrally portrayed. Instead, we follow this feathered farewell as a quiet but growing alienation from the world, a no-longer-belonging. And one day we will all grow the wings that go with it.

Marie Ketzscher

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger
Script
Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger
Cinematographer
Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger
Editor
Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger
Producer
Peter Lindhout
Co-Producer
Annemie Degryse, Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger, Ben Tesseur
Sound
Corinne Dubien
Sound Design
Corinne Dubien
Score
Roos Rebergen, Sjoerd Bruil
Animation
Rosanne Janssens, Mirjam Plettinx, Geertrui de Vijlder
World Sales
Annabel Sebag
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award, Gedanken Aufschluss Prize
Filmstill Oscurana

Oscurana

Oscurana
Violeta Mora
International Competition Documentary Film 2025
Documentary Film
Honduras,
Portugal,
Hungary,
Belgium
2025
21 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

The dazzling sun hangs in the sky, but while it slowly sinks, a cacophony of unknown voices and sounds spreads across the horizon. “The darkness is coming like a smoke that expands,” the director comments in voice-over, and takes us deeper into the night, on the path risked by many migrants from Central America: on foot, through dangerous landscapes, with an uncertain outcome.
In her immersive short film, Violeta Mora brings this path to life. A shaky handheld camera follows heavy footsteps, we hear the fugitives’ breath and the sounds of animals. The flash-streaked blackness is full of scraps of desperate conversations and calls for help, while the sense of threat keeps mounting. A film that does not seek to explain but allows us to feel tangibly and directly what it means to cross a border – in hopes of a better life.

Seggen Mikael

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Violeta Mora
Cinematographer
Violeta Mora
Editor
Violeta Mora
Producer
Violeta Mora
Sound Design
Violeta Mora, Tiago Raposinho
Kids DOK 2025
Filmstill Peninsula
Peninsula
Angèle Vergoni, Sarah Vanhoeck
A giant woman wakes up on a pastel-coloured island inhabited by small yellow creatures. She sets out to look for a world better fitted for her.
Filmstill Peninsula

Peninsula

Presqu’îles
Angèle Vergoni, Sarah Vanhoeck
Kids DOK 2025
Animated Film
Belgium
2025
6 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A giant woman wakes up on a pastel-coloured island where small yellow creatures harvest carrots. She seems too big for this world. Every step of her giant feet threatens to destroy a vegetable patch or hurt someone. Searching for a more suitable place to live she finally finds out where she belongs.

Tina Jany

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Angèle Vergoni, Sarah Vanhoeck
Script
Angèle Vergoni, Sarah Vanhoeck
Cinematographer
Angèle Vergoni, Sarah Vanhoeck
Editor
Angèle Vergoni
Producer
Christelle Coopman
Sound
Sarah Vanhoeck
Sound Design
Sarah Vanhoeck
Score
Sergei Chetvertnykh, Chimimin, Geoff Hervey
Animation
Angèle Vergoni
World Sales
Annabel Sebag
Filmstill Ping Pong

Ping Pong

Ping Pong
Tianji Yu
International Competition Animated Film 2025
Animated Film
Belgium,
Hungary,
Portugal,
China
2025
15 minutes
Chinese
Subtitles: 
English

The film opens with the obvious: The problem of the AI’s lack of physicality – it cannot play ping pong with director Tianji Yu. But would it be conceivable for Yu to arrange to play ping pong with a former friend and playmate who now votes for Trump? Do his political otherness and physical absence make this friend as immaterial as the AI? Is this absence insurmountable – both the AI’s and the friend’s?
A ping pong conversation evolves during which the director’s deep memories and honest reflections turn the superficial and banal AI into an actual surrogate partner. A partner that enables a slow rapprochement to the lost friendship and triggers reflections about humans as political beings. The artificiality of the AI is unpeeled layer by layer. Yu visually stimulates us to penetrate to the core of things through the poetically captivating layers of the visual design as we start with documentary footage alienated by a distorting mirror and transition to a moving painting of simple, semi-realistic 3D animations that unfold as if behind a brushstroke filter.

Irina Rubina

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tianji Yu
Cinematographer
Yifan Wen
Editor
Tianji Yu
Producer
Tianji Yu
Sound
Tianji Yu
Sound Design
Tianji Yu
Animation
Tianji Yu
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
Filmstill The Red Moon Eclipse

The Red Moon Eclipse

L’éclipse de la lune rouge
Caroline Guimbal
International Competition Documentary Film 2025
Documentary Film
Belgium
2025
76 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

Two pieces of news change director Caroline Guimbal’s life at Christmas: Her mother Natalie has cancer and she herself is pregnant. She follows Natalie over a period of two years, entering into a dialogue that extends across several levels. On the one hand, Guimbal films her mother in close, delicate shots, listens to her memories, documents her close connection with nature and the gradual decline caused by the disease. Another conversation is conducted offscreen, a conversation with herself that recounts experienced brutality and abuse: It is about all the men who beat up and exploited her mother and who have also left their mark on the daughter’s childhood and adolescent memories, not least on the recurring pattern of her own relationships.
“The Red Moon Eclipse” is a bitterly sensitive portrait that examines the conditions and simultaneity of events. Like a blood moon, which describes a total eclipse of the sun where sun, moon and earth are aligned, Caroline Guimbal draws lines: between mother and mother, daughter and mother, past and present. What is left at the end is the question of love – true love and love that only pretends to be true and usually causes pain.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Caroline Guimbal
Cinematographer
Caroline Guimbal
Editor
Caroline Guimbal
Producer
Anne-laure Guégan, Géraldine Sprimont
Co-Producer
Javier Packer-Comyn
Sound
Caroline Guimbal
Sound Design
Mim, Laurent Martin
Key Collaborator
Thomas Schira
Nominated for: Silver Dove, FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Winner of: FIPRESCI Prize
Filmstill Welded Together

Welded Together

Welded Together
Anastasiya Miroshnichenko
Audience Competition 2025
Documentary Film
France,
Netherlands,
Belgium
2025
96 minutes
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

Katya lights the candles on her 22nd birthday cake alone, nobody is there yet to celebrate with her. She has recently moved in with her mother. Mama drinks and has just had a new baby: Amina. Abandoned as a child, Katya grew up without her mother, who lost custody because of her alcohol addiction. Now Katya frequently takes care of her little sister while her mother is nowhere to be found. She always returns with professions of guilt and promises to do better. Katya finds support in her friend Tanya, with whom she shares a similar biography. And she finds recognition in her job as a welder, for which she has a particular talent.
In “Welded Together”, Anastasiya Miroshnichenko portrays a young woman who clings for a long time to the idea of a family that can be put back together, even though there is a lot of evidence to the contrary. Miroshnichenko mainly captures her protagonist through her facial expressions – Katya’s usually shifts between emptiness and sadness; it is like a mirror that reveals the complexity and tragedy of the situation. Meanwhile, the social services department is responsible for protecting Katya and Amina. The office becomes an ambivalent place to go in the midst of this equally dark and fateful winter.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Anastasiya Miroshnichenko
Cinematographer
Pavel Romanenya
Editor
Kasia Boniecka, Stanislav Kalilaska
Producer
Valérie Montmartin, Raphael Pelissou
Co-Producer
Iris Lammertsma, Babet Touw, Eva Kuperman
Sound Design
Lex Krutz
Score
Rui Reis Maia
World Sales
Anna Berthollet
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Winner of: MDR Film Prize