Film Archive

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Filmstill Sultana’s Dream

Sultana’s Dream

El sueño de la Sultana
Isabel Herguera
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
Spain,
Germany
2023
86 minutes
Hindi,
Bengali,
Spanish,
Basque,
English,
Italian
Subtitles: 
English

Dreamy animated images in detailed henna painting and atmospheric watercolours dominate a young Spanish artist’s moving journey of discovery. In a small bookshop in India, Inés comes across the feminist-utopian science fiction story “Sultana’s Dream.” It is about the terrible revenge on men, the bookseller explains. In the slim volume she wrote in 1905, Rokeya Hossain describes the fantasy realm of Ladyland – a land in which women are self-determined and live in peace, in which they run all government affairs and all forms of education are open to them. And the men? Their place in Ladyland, the bookseller continues, is where they belong: locked up at home.

Fascinated by the literary “painting” of this place and its inventor, Inés sets out in the footsteps of the writer and teacher Hossain, who championed education and equal rights for Indian girls and women as early as the beginning of the 20th century. The trip takes the Spaniard across contemporary India. Her companions are the dreams of Ladyland – and the utterly different realities of the lives of the women she meets on her journey.

Jana Kraft

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Isabel Herguera
Script
Gianmarco Serra, Isabel Herguera
Cinematographer
Eduardo Elosegi
Editor
Gianmarco Serra
Producer
Fabian Driehorst, Chelo Loureiro, Mariano Baratech, Diego Herguera, Iván Miñambres
Sound Design
Simon Bastian, Gianmarco Serra
Score
Gianmarco Serra, Tajdar Junaid
Animation
Izibene Oñederra Aramendi, Ana María Sabater Araújo, Paula Valiño Rivera, Sergio Pereira del Castillo, María José Alfonso Torrescusa
World Sales
Wouter Jansen
German Distributor
Vanessa Ciszewski
Artistic Design
Francisco Muñoz de Gregorio, María Manero Muro, Rajesh Thakare, Nelson Cabrera Curbelo, Upamanyu Bhattacharyya, Bhusan Katkar, Aravind Senan, Begoña Vicario, Troy Vasanth
Opening Film 2023
Filmstill White Angel – The End of Marinka
White Angel – The End of Marinka
Arndt Ginzel
Summer 2022 in eastern Ukraine: The police evacuate people from the war zone, bodycams record the dramatic events. In 2023, the film team talks to survivors.
Filmstill White Angel – The End of Marinka
Filmstill White Angel – The End of Marinka

White Angel – The End of Marinka

White Angel – Das Ende von Marinka
Arndt Ginzel
Opening Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
103 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
German, English

The small town of Marinka lies in the Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast. Almost 10,000 people lived there, even though the town was under constant attack by pro-Russian separatists since 2014. When the war escalated in the spring of 2022, however, Marinka came under heavy artillery fire and practically all residents had to leave the town by September. The local police helped get them out. One of the policemen is Vasyl, the protagonist of this film. In a white van, soon christened the “white angel” by the population, he and his colleagues pull civilians out of the line of fire, recover the wounded and the dead. Vasyl’s helmet camera records the dramatic events of their missions: evacuating scared people from their cellars, first aid for the seriously injured, the hasty gathering of personal belongings, the painful and permanent partings.

Six months after the end of Marinka, the Leipzig-based investigative journalist Arndt Ginzel and his crew return to eastern Ukraine. They find the survivors, rescued persons and rescuers, and let them comment the action cam images. They speak of losses, of pain and grief, but also of hopes and dreams. “White Angel – The End of Marinka” is more than a film about war. It is a document of humanity and the longing for peace.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Arndt Ginzel
Cinematographer
Gerald Gerber
Producer
Martin Kraushaar
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Guntram Schuschke, Beatrix Grundt, Claudia Huber , Nicole Schuschke, Christina Susanne Marx, Annina Wolf
Nominated for: Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, MDR Film Prize