Film Archive

Sections (Film Archive)

Opening Film 2021
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The Rhine Flows to the Mediterranean Sea
Offer Avnon
After ten years in Germany, the filmmaker returns to Israel and takes stock of that time, but also looks at his homeland from a changed perspective.
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The Rhine Flows to the Mediterranean Sea

Der Rhein fließt ins Mittelmeer
Offer Avnon
Opening Film 2021
Documentary Film
Israel
2021
95 minutes
German,
Hebrew,
English,
Polish
Subtitles: 
English

After ten years in Germany, where he acquired “the beautiful language of the former arch enemy”, the filmmaker returns to Haifa and takes stock of the time spent between the rivers Rhine and Neisse, but also looks at his home from a changed perspective. The result is a complex montage of images from those years: conversations, landscapes and objects, sought and found in Germany, Poland and Israel.

“The Rhine Flows to the Mediterranean Sea” attempts the Sisyphean task of a localization between philo- and anti-Semites, the anxious and the indifferent, those who remember and those who suppress. Not an image or sentence that doesn’t trigger a multitude of associations. The devil is in the detail: This film opens our eyes to this. What are the traumas that perpetuate the Holocaust, which the filmmaker, son of a Polish survivor, was unable to forget, “never, not for a single day” in all those years in Germany? What mechanisms of suppression are at work among the relatives of the perpetrators, of the victims? How is the perception, the mind, the memory of the individual shaped by belonging to a nation, a religion or political group? Offer Avnon gives fragmentary answers and each raises new questions. The search for the “uncanny” he began with his film is far from over.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Offer Avnon
Editor
Offer Avnon
Producer
Offer Avnon
Filmstill No Dogs or Italians Allowed

No Dogs or Italians Allowed

Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens
Alain Ughetto
Opening Film 2022
Animated Film
France,
Italy,
Belgium,
Switzerland,
Portugal
2022
70 minutes
French,
Italian
Subtitles: 
English

Hunger and hardship ruled the Piemontese mountain village of Ughettera at the beginning of the 20th century. The meek peasants complained neither about the parasitic priests nor the tough seasonal winter work in neighbouring France – not even when the Italian state called them to arms and sent them first to Libya, then into the World War. Only when the Fascists arrive did the Ughetto family trade its home for new deprivations and new hopes across the border.

With this imaginatively directed puppet animation, Alain Ughetto has created a warm-hearted memorial to his Italian grandparents Cesira and Luigi. With subtle humour, tenderness and empathy he tells of generations who lived in poverty, but also of happiness and love, fortunes and misfortunes. “You don’t come from a country, you come from your childhood”, Cesira teaches him. The director finds himself in this family chronicle, recognises his predilection for working with his hands. Soon the film becomes a reflection on telling stories with what these hands shaped. They are frequently present in the frame – piling charcoal into a mountain, making forests from broccoli or simply getting handed a cup of damn strong espresso by Cesira.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Alain Ughetto
Cinematographer
Fabien Drouet, Sara Sponga
Editor
Denis Leborgne
Producer
Alexandre Cornu
Score
Nicola Piovani
Animation
Marjolaine Parot
World Sales
Clément Chautant
Nominated for: Young Eyes Film Award
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