Film Archive

Sections (Film Archive)

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A Bay

Uma baía
Murilo Salles
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Brazil
2021
109 minutes
Portuguese (Brazil)
Subtitles: 
English

The Baía de Guanabara is not just any bay: the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro has sprawled around it. Its waste water threatens the rich ecosystem, planes roar along the approach corridors above. These filmic explorations on the margins of the megacity portray various environments that are all connected to the bay in a specific way. The people here are micro-wage earners making a modest living.

At night the lights of the city and the promises of capitalism shine in the distance. To the people living at the periphery, they seem out of reach. In eight chapters this documentary essay meditates on their habitats along the bay, following the repetitive and physically exhausting activities of humans and farm animals. Unusual perspectives, careful camera work and a poignant sound design elevate these observations to a commentary on the crisis in Brazil. Murilo Salles, who won a Silver Dove in Leipzig in 1978 for his debut “These Are the Weapons”, sheds light on the close link between geographical space and social inequality.
Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Murilo Salles
Script
Murilo Salles, Eva Randolph, Itauana Coquet
Cinematographer
Léo Bittencourt, Fabrício Mota
Editor
Eva Randolph
Producer
Murilo Salles
Sound
Felipe Luz
Score
João Jabace, Sarah Lelièvre
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
International Competition 2021
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A Custom of the Sea
Fabrizio Polpettini
Three friends explore the radiance of the Mediterranean, which connects Christian and Islamic countries and has always been and still is a site of conflicts.
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A Custom of the Sea

Un usage de la mer
Fabrizio Polpettini
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
France
2021
52 minutes
Arabic,
English,
French,
Italian
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

Porto Maurizio, where the director, who lives in France today, grew up, is located on the Ligurian coast. The village is the starting point for a cinematic journey into the past that spans a surprisingly wide arc to a time when Muslim pirates, the corsairs, haunted the Mediterranean and took Europeans as slaves. To this end, the film light-handedly draws from the rich fund of film history and its iconography.

Adventure films from the 1940s and historical murals depict the naval battles of the early 19th century in powerful images. The director ingeniously combines such visual finds with analogue new recordings of a journey with two friends. Their seemingly loosely told anecdotes and chance encounters combine to form a coherent whole, forming a geopolitical system of coordinates around the Mediterranean that deals with eurocentrism, colonial history and religiously motivated conflicts between Christian and Islamic countries. The subjects couldn’t be more topical.
Annina Wettstein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Fabrizio Polpettini
Cinematographer
Valentina Provini
Editor
Marylou Vergès
Producer
Fabrizio Polpettini
Co-Producer
Pierre-André Belin
International Competition 2022
Filmstill A Hawk as Big as a Horse
A Hawk as Big as a Horse
Sasha Kulak
In the periphery of Moscow, transgender ornithologist Lydia works at realising her dream to make the “Twin Peaks” universe more and more manifest in her life.
Filmstill A Hawk as Big as a Horse

A Hawk as Big as a Horse

Yastreb razmerom s loshad’
Sasha Kulak
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
France
2022
74 minutes
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

A blue wooden house at the edge of the forest, lonely, but not peaceful and quiet. This is where Lydia lives, a transgender ornithologist who presents herself in high heels and a pearl necklace one day, in cargo pants and functional wear the next. Director Sasha Kulak calls her film a documentary fairy tale, and the borders between reality and fiction are blurred indeed, because Lydia loves play, staging, the uncanny – and David Lynch.

Lydia has watched “Twin Peaks” more than thirty times, its characters and plots have long since spilled over into Shcherbinka, a small town south of Moscow. She claims to find bodies in the underbrush and even Lynch’s “Red Room” has been replicated under the roof of her house. Now she’s facing a new challenge: the creation of Lara, a lifelike silicone doll whose voice also guides us through Kulak’s cinematic tale. Lydia works hard at realising her dreams, but she is equally passionate about studying birds and the so-called Nezhulyas, shy eyeless creatures that are exceedingly cuddly and have tantric potential. “A Hawk as Big as a Horse” becomes a vehicle of Lydia’s visions, using three-dimensional animation and various cinematic techniques to open a portal to a very specific fantasy.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sasha Kulak
Cinematographer
Sasha Kulak
Editor
Sasha Kulak
Producer
Louis Beaudemont
Sound
Andrei Dergatchev
Score
Iakov Mironchev
Animation
Elizaveta Federmesser
Winner of: Special Mention (International Competition)
Filmstill A Life Like Any Other

A Life Like Any Other

Une vie comme une autre
Faustine Cros
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Belgium,
France
2022
68 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

Over many years, the director’s father filmed his family life almost obsessively. His daughter’s birth, his son’s first steps, and always Valérie, the young mother. An impressive fund of material which their now grown-up daughter Faustine appropriates to tell quite a different story: that of a woman who sees her role as a mother and its demands take away her freedom step by step.

In the here and now, the director observes her parents in the big empty house in the country: her hyperactive father who is constantly tinkering with something, and her chain-smoking mother who sits at the kitchen table and whose sharp mind can only be surmised from her eyes. What happened? What happened to the energetic and independent young make-up artist? The one who admires witches and wants to take a trip around the world. The one who could easily earn her own living but still gives up her job. “The gaze is important”, the now 60-year-old Valérie tells her daughter once while applying make-up. Yes, the gaze is important. And with her film, director Faustine Cros counters the gaze directed at her mother over all those years with a new narrative.
Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Faustine Cros
Cinematographer
Faustine Cros, Jean-Louis Cros
Editor
Faustine Cros, Cédric Zoenen
Producer
Julie Freres, Camille Laemlé
Co-Producer
Sound Image Culture, Centre de l'Audiovisuel à Bruxelles (CBA), RTBF
Sound
Faustine Cros
Score
Ferdinand Cros
World Sales
Anna Berthollet
Winner of: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, Silver Dove (International Competition)
Filmstill A Night Song

A Night Song

Le chant de la nuit
Félix Lamarche
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Canada
2022
45 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

A patient camera glides over the everyday objects: still lives on the wall, flowers in the vase, a swaying drop light. The sun enters the cosy home where Noëlla sits smoking at her laptop, playing Solitaire. The situation is hopeless. She’s going to lose against the computer once again. All the while her son-in-law, Pierre, is organising everything she needs, pragmatic and friendly: breakfast, the (last) doctor’s visit – and then the transfer.

Because Noëlla intends to die, and she is determined. Pierre conscientiously manages the paperwork and invites her loved ones to say goodbye. They bring photos and chat with the protagonist who is about to depart this life and who waves one last time before the doctor administers the deadly dose. Bye bye, that’s it. Dying can be so unexcited. This slowed-down, minute study of time very gradually acquires a completely different meaning from what one assumed at first. How one would love to see the onetakes from the beginning again. Félix Lamarche’s unpretentious observation evolves into a metaphor of life. Noëlla’s insistent head-on gaze from the screen into the viewers’ eyes will always be unforgettable.
Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Félix Lamarche
Cinematographer
Félix Lamarche
Editor
René Roberge
Producer
Félix Lamarche
Sound
Samuel Gagnon-Thibodeau
World Sales
Robin Miranda das Neves
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
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among us women

Unter uns Frauen
Sarah Noa Bozenhardt, Daniel Abate Tilahun
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Ethiopia,
Germany
2021
92 minutes
Amharic,
English
Subtitles: 
English

In rural Ethiopia the staff of a health centre are fighting maternal mortality. They tirelessly appeal to women to give birth in the clinic. But reservations are strong, and so are the practical obstacles. How are heavily pregnant women supposed to arrive in time when the ambulance comes hours later or not at all? Against medical advice, Hulu Ager decides to give birth at home, assisted by a traditional midwife.

With palpable familiarity, the film crew captures moments of intimate communion between Hulu Ager, the midwives and other women. On the margins of the central conflict, the many challenges they face in a patriarchal society emerge. The debates are most lively under the hood dryer at the hairdresser’s: She doesn’t enjoy sex because of her circumcision, the medical professional Welela reports. “Sometimes you have to prepare yourself for sex,” another customer advises. Sometimes it helps to get drunk. But the perky hairdresser is sure: Bad sex is grounds for divorce. The women share their desires and woes with each other, experience solidarity and gather courage for small and great acts of departure and resistance. Men are relegated to the role of extras, if at all.
Sarina Lacaf

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sarah Noa Bozenhardt, Daniel Abate Tilahun
Script
Sarah Noa Bozenhardt
Cinematographer
Bernarda Cornejo Pinto
Editor
Andrea Munoz
Producer
Sonja Kilbertus
Co-Producer
Hiwot Admasu, Beza Hailu Lemma
Sound
Alex Praet
Score
Anna-Marlene Bicking
Winner of: Honourable Mendtion (International Competition)
Filmstill Anhell69

Anhell69

Anhell69
Theo Montoya
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Colombia,
France,
Germany,
Romania
2022
75 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

Theo Montoya draws on casting outtakes, melancholy observations of daily life and decadent party impressions from his friends to create a morbid and yet tender portrait of a young, queer generation in Colombia. In a country marked by violence and repression they can hardly imagine their future, but maintain a close, almost loving relationship with death.

This was meant to be a fiction film: a ghost story in which the dead no longer find cemetery space and consequently coexist with the living, including having sexual relationships – which the state rigorously forbids and persecutes. A clandestine nocturnal subculture emerges where erotic desires for which daylight means annihilation can be acted out. A week after Montoya found his leading actor for the project, the latter died of a heroin overdose. More deaths among his friends follow. They are the ghosts haunting the film that was ultimately made. It retains its dystopian character, but the dangers it portrays are quite real: For these young people, they are part of everyday life in Medellín, which is still deep in the shadow of Pablo Escobar and where the search for pleasure and human warmth takes one through labyrinthine abysses.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Theo Montoya
Script
Theo Montoya
Cinematographer
Theo Montoya
Editor
Matthieu Taponier, Delia Oniga, Theo Montoya
Producer
Theo Montoya, Juan Pablo Castrillón, Bianca Oana, David Hurst
Co-Producer
Balthasar Busmann, Maximilian Haslberger
Sound
Eloisa Arcila Fernandez, Estephany Cano
Sound Design
Marius Leftărache, Victor Miu
Score
Vlad Feneșan, Marius Leftărache
Winner of: Golden Dove (International Competition)
International Competition 2021
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Bucolic
Karol Pałka
Country life as presented by Karol Pałka is not exactly romantic: two women, a ramshackle house, the ground wet, the clothes dirty. An unconventional visit to a wasteland.
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Bucolic

Bukolika
Karol Pałka
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Poland
2021
70 minutes
Polish
Subtitles: 
German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing, English

Danusia and Basia are a mother and daughter, sharing a life presented by director Karol Pałka as supremely secluded. Far removed from any comfort, the seasons pass, a priest comes to visit, the women wade through mud and cultivate their habits. But, unnoticed by Danusia, Basia moves on a few back roads of her own that lead in other directions.

The nearest town seems light years away. Danusia and her daughter Basia lead a reclusive life in a ramshackle house in the country. The rooms are decorated with flower arrangements, scattered with devotional objects. Mother and daughter cultivate their connection to the supernatural, either in the shape of a strict Catholicism or as small rituals in nature. In one scene Basia dances around a fire like a witch. She is also the one who repeatedly seeks contact with the outside world. We see her with a mobile phone then, but the person at the other end remains intangible, unable or unwilling to break the spell around the mother-and-daughter team. It is a dense, almost deserted world which Karol Pałka in his debut film renders in gloomy, shadowed images that grow brighter only when spring comes. But even then, the dramatic opening piece “Specially for You” by the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha still resonates.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Karol Pałka
Script
Karol Pałka
Cinematographer
Karol Pałka
Editor
Katarzyna Boniecka
Producer
Karolina Mróz, Wojciech Marczewski
Co-Producer
National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute
Sound
Piotr Knop, Anna Rok
World Sales
Marcella Jelic
Winner of: Silver Dove (International Competition)
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Camagroga

Camagroga
Alfonso Amador
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Spain
2019
111 minutes
Catalan,
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

The Huerta Valenciana is a unique cultural landscape of fields and plantations. For generations this region, mainly planted with perennially rotating crops of tigernuts, artichokes and onions, was regarded as the vegetable garden of Spain. “Camagroga” is a filmic elegy about peasant pride and how it is inscribed in the physiognomies, gestures and postures of the people behind these agricultural products.

Tardor, as autumn is called in the Valencian regional language, is the season when the tigernut straw is burned on the fields to make the winter harvest of the nut-sized bulbs easier. Antonio Ramon and his daughter Inma run a farm of just under four hectares north of Valencia – hardly a profitable size nowadays. And yet they apply a surfeit of care and traditional knowledge to their products, seemingly following the impulses of their vegetative nerve system rather than a deliberate programme. Ever since their fields were also identified as prime real estate in the development plan of the expanding provincial capital, however, they have known that the battle zone has already reached their barn door.
Ralph Eue

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Alfonso Amador
Script
Alfonso Amador
Cinematographer
Alfonso Amador
Editor
Sergi Dies
Producer
Xavier Crespo, Alfonso Amador
Sound
Jorge Salvà, José Serrador
Score
Carles Dènia, Pep Gimeno, Miquel Gil
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize
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Children

Yeladim
Ada Ushpiz
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Israel
2020
128 minutes
Arabic
Subtitles: 
English

There are children, too, among the Palestinian insurgents. For some time now, the Israeli side has observed minors who take an active part in an Intifada, especially with knives. They are harshly dealt with: prison, hardly any judiciary support. Ada Ushpiz, filmmaker and journalist, comes surprisingly close to some of the Palestinian families concerned. She has accompanied the dubious insurgents over several years and witnessed terrible pressure.

Freshly released from prison, 12-year-old Dima encounters a crowd of television people. A few months ago, she was caught with a knife. The attack was said to be aimed at Jewish Israelis. Now, in a frenzy of camera flashes, her mother stands close by her side. But instead of offering protection she assumes the role of an agitator, demanding that her daughter report how she was treated by the Israelis. But Dima remains silent. Her family describes the pubescent girl as mentally handicapped. Dareen is younger than Dima and lives with her brothers, father and a few snakes in the immediate vicinity of their Israeli neighbours. Soldiers stalk the house, sometimes stones fly, Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, is allegedly involved. In her astonishing film, Ushpiz shows a life in constant tension. Her approach is unapologetic and familiar.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ada Ushpiz
Cinematographer
Danor Glazer, Bilal Saed
Editor
Neta Braun
Producer
Ada Ushpiz
Co-Producer
Philippa Kowarsky
Sound
Aviv Aldema
Score
Avi Balleli
World Sales
Philippa Kowarsky
Broadcaster
Channel 8
Funder
NFCT
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize
International Competition 2022
Filmstill Ciné-Guerillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels
Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels
Mila Turajlić
Yugoslav cinematographer Stevan Labudović travelled to Algeria in 1959. His footage provided valuable assistance to independence from French colonial rule.
Filmstill Ciné-Guerillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels
Mila Turajlić
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Serbia,
France
2022
94 minutes
Serbian,
French,
Arabic,
English
Subtitles: 
English

What do the Algerian war of liberation and Yugoslavia have in common? Stevan Labudović. In 1959, Tito himself sent his favourite cinematographer to Algeria. The resistance against the French colonial rule needed the eyes of the world, and the experienced partisan Labudović helped open them: His images gave the lie to the propaganda of the occupiers and their Western allies. This is a portrait of the man, the mission and the age – as film, ideological and personal history.

For three years, until the Democratic Republic of Algeria was proclaimed, Labudović put himself and his camera at the service of the people fighting for independence. Mila Turajlić found the newsreel footage shot at the time in the Filmske Novosti archive in Belgrade, got in touch with the aged pensioner and followed his trail. From a wealth of archive material, diary entries by and interviews with Labudović, with contemporary witnesses from Yugoslavia, Algeria and New York, where the young Maghreb state, like many other former colonies, struggled for admission to the United Nations, she distils the promising origins of an alliance that stood at the beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was to oppose the dichotomy of the superpowers. Thus the bow to her compatriot also gains global political topicality.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mila Turajlić
Cinematographer
Mila Turajlić
Editor
Sylvie Gadmer, Anne Renardet, Mila Turajlić
Producer
Carine Chichkowsky, Mila Turajlić
Sound
Aleksandar Protić
Score
Troy Herion
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize
International Competition 2020
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Considering the Ends
Elsa Maury
Shepherdess Nathalie learns what it means to kill with one’s own hands. Her process of development turns out to be a holistic learning experience: about responsibility, care and knives.
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Considering the Ends

Nous la mangerons, c’est la moindre des choses
Elsa Maury
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Belgium,
France
2020
67 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

The vultures are circling over the Cevennes, the south-eastern part of the French Massif Central. They are part of the holistic cycle of becoming and passing away which shepherdess Nathalie seeks to come closer to. Because the vultures are gnawing at the remains of her beloved animals. She considers herself responsible not only for their lives, but also for their death. Elsa Maury’s film is an unequivocal testimony to what it means to wield the fatal knife oneself.

The sounds made by a ewe when a lamb is born seem almost human. And when a little later the newborn turns out to be unwilling to live it seems as if one could detect pain in the mother’s eyes. The shepherdess Nathalie’s empathic look at her flock was transferred directly to the viewer. Each animal here has its own name, each has a biography that Nathalie knows by heart. And it’s ultimately up to her to finally decide when the end of a sheep is near. In diary-like sequences we learn about her feelings, take part in a difficult process of development which results in new self-confidence, perhaps even new wisdom. Elsa Maury shows a perennial school of killing and death. She leaves the events uncommented, but achieves an intensity through images and editing that stays with us for a long time.
Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elsa Maury
Cinematographer
Christian Tessier, Martin Flament, Elsa Maury
Editor
Geoffroy Cernaix, Pauline Piris-Nury
Producer
Cyril Bibas
Co-Producer
Luc Reder, Olivier Burlet, Javier Packer-Comyn
Sound
Marc Siffert, Loïc Villiot, Galaad Germa, Willy Boutet, Elsa Maury
World Sales
Philippe Cotte
Narrator
Nathalie Savalois
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize
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Conversations with Siro

Conversations avec Siro
Dima El-Horr
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
Lebanon,
France
2021
52 minutes
Arabic,
French
Subtitles: 
French, English

Lebanese filmmaker Dima El-Horr moved to Paris several years ago. Among the friends who stayed at home is the artist Sirvat Fazlian, whom she regularly visits in Beirut until the failed revolution of 2019, the COVID lockdown, the devastating port explosion and finally the dramatic economic crisis put a temporary end to their meetings. So the director decides to give her conversations with Siro a cinematic form.

Ever since the death of her husband, the well-known Armenian actor Berj Fazlian, Siro has lived alone in a flat filled with souvenirs and devoted most of her time to music and painting. In this film, footage from the years before 2019 blends with recorded phone calls between Siro and Dima and recent scenes from Paris, coming together in a densely woven portrait of life in exile. While snow falls in Paris, Siro talks about warm days on the Mediterranean coast and sings Armenian songs. She rails against the permanent crisis in Lebanon, but her nature is not affected. For one thing, Siro personifies the legendary Lebanese resilience. Yet for the filmmaker she represents that part of the heart that people in exile leave behind. So almost inevitably, “Conversations with Siro” becomes the director’s dialogue with herself.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dima El-Horr
Cinematographer
Dima El-Horr
Editor
Catherine Zins
Producer
Paul Rognoni, Sabine Sidawi
Sound
Jean-Pierre Dussardier
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Filmstill Divine Factory

Divine Factory

Divine Factory
Joseph Mangat
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Philippines,
USA,
Taiwan
2022
120 minutes
Filipino
Subtitles: 
English

When the time “when St. Joseph came” is mentioned in this film, it doesn’t refer to a religious phenomenon, but to the most popular product of TML Holy Crafts Incorporated. In the factory on the Philippines, the country with the third-largest Catholic population in the world, the employees manufacture statues of saints under exploitative conditions. Joseph Mangat portrays this place with a focus on the workers, including some from the LGBTQI community.

In the first scene, a plaster bust is uncovered layer by layer. This image could also serve to describe the approach of “Divine Factory”: From the shop to the workshop, from the entrepreneur to the simple worker, from the production to the uses made of the religious articles, this film reveals the social and economic facets of this institution. The Filipino director not only observes precisely how people work and trade there, he also involves the participants in frank conversations about love, wages and living conditions. The employees’ profit-oriented payment model reveals how economical and religious ideas interlock. The success of the company in the city of Antipolo near Manila, desirable for all, thus appears as nothing short of a divine blessing.
Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Joseph Mangat
Cinematographer
Albert Banzon
Editor
Ilsa Malsi, Joseph Mangat
Producer
Alemberg Ang, Stefano Centini
Sound
Duu-Chih Tu
World Sales
Lya Li
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
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Downstream to Kinshasa

En route pour le milliard
Dieudo Hamadi
International Competition 2020
Documentary Film
Belgium,
DR Congo,
France
2020
90 minutes
Lingala,
Swahili
Subtitles: 
English

In the summer of 2000 Ugandan and Rwandan troops fought a devastating battle in Kisangani. The International Court of Justice sentenced Uganda to pay one billion U.S. dollars to the civilian victims. After almost twenty years of waiting in vain, some of them set out for Kinshasa to enforce their legal claim. The physical and theatrical power of their mission both drives and radiates from this film.

Dieudo Hamadi has given the women and men he is about to follow down the Congo a visually confident and assured exposition. Gathered on an inky black stage, they look at us and sing: of blood spilled, of money forgotten. Then the march of the maimed sets itself in motion, on crutches, with prostheses, past the nearby pits of the dead and out into the country. Every metre covered is an act of rebellion. When the procession of beggars, who rightly won’t tolerate this designation, finally climbs the stairs of the National Parliament, iconic scenes of Soviet revolutionary cinema seem to shine through. But the crowd that is moving here is different. Its individual bodies push back with all their weight both against the casual shrug of the shoulders of political routine and the carelessly rounded calculations of loss and equivalent value of the arithmetic of war.
Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dieudo Hamadi
Cinematographer
Dieudo Hamadi
Editor
Hélène Ballis, Catherine Catella
Producer
Quentin Laurent, Frédéric Féraud, Dieudo Hamadi
Co-Producer
Aurelien Bodinaux
Sound
Sylvain Aketi, Dieudo Hamadi
Score
Les Zombies de Kisangani
World Sales
Stephan Riguet
Winner of: Golden Dove (International Competition), Prize of the Interreligious Jury
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Father

Ye ye he fu qin
Wei Deng
International Competition 2021
Documentary Film
China
2020
97 minutes
Chinese
Subtitles: 
English

“After I die, show your film at my funeral!” Zuogui, the director’s grandfather, is 86 years old and has been blind since childhood. Becoming a fortune teller was a way out of poverty for him. People are still coming to him for advice, including his son Donggu, a developer: “Dad, how is my fortune next year?” In his portrait of generations about his father and grandfather, Wei Deng depicts tradition and change, violence and alienation in Chinese society.

Pale greys and dim lights create an atmosphere that seems to correspond to the dark memories of famine, dead siblings and the violently enforced one-child policy. The camera stays close to the grandfather as he feels his way along the walls of his flat. Orienting himself in his own environment has become harder since Donggu had the old house torn down and a new one built. Zuogui has little use for the modern China that claims to stand for economic boom and prosperity. Only when another of his son’s developments, which the fortune teller had warned against, threatens to fail does affection between the two seem possible again.
Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Wei Deng
Cinematographer
Wei Deng
Editor
Wei Deng
Producer
Wei Deng
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Winner of: Golden Dove (International Competition)