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Nina Kühne
Julia Bierstedt
Jan-Philipp Kohlmann
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For the seventh time, the DOK Neuland experience will be part of DOK Leipzig. From 26 to 31 October, a total of ten works produced in 15 countries will be presented at the Museum of Fine Arts (MdbK), including four 360° films and six VR experiences. Based on the observation that the pandemic has upset the usual expectation of control and order everywhere in the world, this exhibition raises the question of what potential lies within chaos.
“Last year, we observed a heightened longing for clarity and the ability to control things,” say curators Lars Rummel and Marie Hinkelmann, “but the world is constantly changing anyway. So we realised that the apparent normality that people are longing for is the greatest illusion of our existence.”
The climate crisis, the shifting of many aspects of life into the digital realm, the relationships that have changed between man, machine and nature in posthumanism and the inequality in global living conditions demand a lot from humanity: that’s the thesis of the exhibition. Some things seem uncontrollable and unpredictable, but without chaos, it would not be possible to notice the opposite, namely the convenience of order. “We don’t want to deny any realities or look away, yet every dystopia can be turned into a utopia. Because where uncertain circumstances prevail, there is also the potential for new creative energies and the emergence of resilience,” Lars Rummel continues. “We have therefore selected works that refer to the unknown and the unplanned. In doing so, however, we are not trying to tame chaos. Rather, using the slogan ‘No chaos, no change’, we seek to embrace it and see it as an opportunity for developing new strategies for engaging with the world.”
In collaboration with the artist Paula Gehrmann, a scenography has been created that turns the exhibition space into an experiential place where visitors can examine their individual relationship to chaos.
The exhibition consists of three parts. In the first, which can be summarised under the title “Present Chaos”, three 360° films present an assessment of the way things are now. Revelation 360 by Reed O’Beirne ponders what the digital realm in which we operate actually is. We are challenged to use our imagination to see more than is shown. Reeducated reconstructs through animation the memories of three men who endured political indoctrination and torture in a re-education camp in the Xinjiang region of China. The essay film Handwritten presents a collage of how the pandemic has altered human relationships and brought people’s everyday lives into the digital realm and at the same time into a state of loneliness.
In the second part, entitled “Transformation”, the VR work Infomorph confronts the audience with an artificial intelligence designed to facilitate the transition to the digital realm. Text, image and sound generated by algorithms usher in a speculative scenario in which an analogue world is neither possible nor necessary. Based on the dystopia that the devastated Earth no longer offers any living space, the VR work Samsara takes the audience into outer space. But there, time is only an illusion, people’s consciousness becomes a collective experience, their DNA is moulded into new life forms and a cycle of endless reincarnation begins. They Dream in My Bones (Insemnopedy II) also deals with the imprinting of humans by their DNA. The 360° film tells the story of a fictional researcher who tries to extract dreams from a skeleton and in the process questions the conventional notions of gender and identity.
The third category, “Beyond Chaos”, contributes a further narrative. In these four works, hierarchies are inverted and light is shed on processes of transformation. The multiplayer VR experience Atomu invites us to witness a ritual of the Kikuyu community in Kenya, in which a man can become a woman and a woman a man. In the process, it follows a genderless person in search of the most genuine version of themselves. The VR work Kykeon was also inspired by ritual practices. Here, dance and VR technology are combined to explore the meaningful potential that ancient rites of different cultures may have for future societies. Hush takes the audience on a meditative journey into Norse mythology. As the world dissolves, the VR experience takes visitors underwater to a lost universe. Finally, Tangible Utopias: Urban Futurism makes fantastical and imaginative living spaces accessible. It creates a walkable urban utopia based on the imagination of 250 children.
The exhibition is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 12 noon to 6 pm and on Wednesday until 8 pm. Admission is free. Furthermore, on Tuesday and from Thursday to Sunday between 10 am and 12 noon, accredited professionals will have an additional opportunity to visit DOK Neuland. MdbK’s rules of admission apply. It is not necessary to book a time slot this year. Admission is via the museum entrance.
DOK Neuland has been supported by ARTE since its first edition. The European culture channel is committed to using new digital technologies for innovative storytelling. DOK Neuland is supported by MDR Media. DOK Neuland is part of the DOK young talent programme and is carried out in cooperation with SLM, the Saxon State Authority for Commercial Broadcasting and New Media. As in previous years, the premises are being made available by MdbK. DOK Leipzig also thanks the US Consulate in Leipzig for its support and Sennheiser for the headphones. This year, DOK Neuland is supported by HTC Vive. From 26 October to 14 November, the VR experiences will be available via the online Viveport platform from anywhere in the world from the comfort of your own home, using your own headset.
Please find the selection of Extended Reality works here: DOK Neuland 2021
You can find the DOK Neuland trailer here: DOK Neuland Trailer
The films in the International Competitions have been finalised, as have the films of the Camera Lucida section, which presents unconventional entries out of competition. The DOK Leipzig film programme is now complete.
The International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film convenes numerous new voices from the documentary field who have a distinctly artistic style. Of the 14 films, 12 will be having their world or international premiere at DOK Leipzig.
In Words of Negroes, Sylvaine Dampierre juxtaposes footage of the day-to-day work in a sugar refinery in her native Guadeloupe with a re-enactment of nearly two-hundred-year-old testimonies of slaves against their brutal master. For KRAI, his first feature-length film, Aleksey Lapin returns to his village in Ukraine and generates an endearing, semi-fictional and absurdist portrait of the place. With a curious eye, Chivas DeVinck turns his attention to a different region: the Nevada desert. The Great Basin captures a microcosm that reveals the economic, social and ecological marginalisation of the rural United States. A remote area is the focus of Veins of the Amazon. Peruvian directors Álvaro and Diego Sarmiento and Finnish anthropologist Terje Toomistu observe what happens on a cargo ship on the Amazon which brings passengers and goods to isolated communities in the Peruvian rainforest.
Numerous filmmakers will be presenting their first works in Leipzig, among them French filmmaker Cléo Cohen, whose first feature-length film, May God Be with You, focuses on her own identity. In an attempt to reconcile her Arab and Jewish selves, she charmingly poses questions to her grandparents, who emigrated from the Maghreb to France. In A Custom of the Sea, Fabrizio Polpettini tells not only of Muslim pirates who plagued the Mediterranean Sea, enslaving Europeans, until the 19th century, but also of Eurocentrism, colonial history and conflicts between Christian and Islamic countries. In her debut film, Water Has No Borders, Maradia Tsaava looks at a dam in Georgia that forms the border with the independent region of Abkhazia. Time and again, the film crew is denied entry into Abkhazia. The result is a reflection on man-made territorial borders.
The films in the International Competition include some of the latest works by well-known filmmakers. In Conversations with Siro, Lebanese filmmaker Dima El-Horr gives cinematic form to a friendly relationship with an artist from her native Beirut, which also prompts reflections on her life in exile in France. In A Bay, Murilo Salles explores the bay of Rio de Janeiro visually and acoustically in eight cinematic fables. With this film, the renowned Brazilian filmmaker returns to Leipzig; in 1978 he was awarded a Silver Dove for his first feature film, These Are the Weapons. Sarah Noa Bozenhardt has also previously had works screened at DOK Leipzig. She presented this year’s competition entry among us women, co-directed with Daniel Abate Tilahun, at DOK Preview Germany in 2020. This film observes a young pregnant woman, her midwife and medical staff in rural, patriarchal Ethiopia, where traditional midwifery clashes with medical obstetrics. Diana El Jeiroudi, co-founder of the DOX BOX initiative to promote Arab-African documentary filmmakers, will be taking part in the competition with her autobiographical debut feature Republic of Silence.
Also taking part in the feature-film competition is Chinese director Wei Deng, whose film Father about his grandfather and father presents a portrait of a generation and tells of tradition and change in Chinese society. Bucolic by Karol Pałka observes a mother and her daughter in their secluded life in the Polish countryside.
Two films in the International Competitions which will have their world premiere at DOK Leipzig were made as part of STEPS’ Generation Africa project, which works with emerging African directors and producers to create films with new narratives about migration – from the perspective of young people from Africa, whose voices are too often absent from global discourse. In Fati’s Choice, Fatimah Dadzie tells the story of a woman who, after a perilous journey to Italy, chooses to return to Ghana, for which she’s criticized in her home country. In the short film Stay Up by Aïssata Ouarma from Burkina Faso, the protagonist uses dance in an attempt to overcome her traumas caused by multiple instances of sexual abuse.
The International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film includes 24 works that, through their multifaceted aesthetic approaches, touch on such themes as utopia and dystopia – as in The Congress by Clément Villiers – or on attempts to discover the truth, as in Saint Marietta by Ben Young. Emotions that are hard to grasp are given an artistic treatment, as in Akane Murata’s Open One’s Mouth and in Everyday Is Like Sunday by Alberto Dexeus. The problematic nature of political systems is also dealt with, as in Kelasi by Congolese visual artist Fransix Tenda Lomba.
The feature-length films in the International Competition are nominated for a Golden Dove and a Silver Dove for the best film by an up-and-coming director. This year, the winning films will be selected by filmmaker, publicist and curator Grit Lemke, who has been with DOK Leipzig for years, most recently as programme director until 2017. Also on the jury are director and producer Anocha Suwichakornpong, producer Katarína Tomková, and Alex Szalat, head of Docs Up Funds which support documentaries dedicated to human rights, as well as artist and musician Raed Yassin.
The jury for the International Short Film Competition is comprised of film artist Izabela Plucińska, who in 2021 will present her animated short 98 kg in the competition for the Audience Award; Marina Kožul, a curator and expert on animated and experimental film; and Gugi Gumilang, executive director of the non-profit organisation In-Docs, which promotes activist cinematic positions on social and justice issues. The jury members will select the recipients of the Golden Dove Short Animated Film and the Golden Dove Short Documentary Film.
The award-winning films will be announced on 30 October at the presentation of the Golden and Silver Doves at CineStar.
Five films not in competition that challenge the conventions of cinema will be shown in the Camera Lucida section. In grainy black and white, Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing poetically tells of political protests that originated at an Indian film school. Miko Revereza and Carolina Fusilier fuse documentary and science fiction in The Still Side, a portrait of an abandoned Mexican island. Arata Mori’s A Million, a journey through an imaginary city shot along the former Silk Road, also blends reality and illusion. In Our Quiet Place by Elitza Gueorguieva, a writer who moved from Belarus to France and began speaking a different language reflects on words, making oneself understood, portrayal and patchy childhood memories. Last but not least, in The Shadow Workers by Annelein Pompe, a dove, always the symbol of the Leipzig festival, tells of a Belgian good-for-nothing and the absurdities of the human condition.
In-person film discussions will be held at cinemas with those filmmakers who are able to travel to Leipzig. As a platform for dialogue, DOK Speaks Up invites filmmakers to participate in moderated discussions that explore topical issues raised by the films currently in competition at the festival. The talk “Deconstructing the Image” examines images, texts and stories from the colonial era and asks whether filmmakers can reimagine the narratives suggested by such footage. In a second talk, titled “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”, directors explore the issue of filming in places and communities to which they themselves do not belong. The third talk, “Elephant on the Wall”, discusses what changes when a camera is present and why the illusion of documentary immediacy is still so often upheld. “Deconstructing the Image” will be shown online as a live stream. The other two discussions will be held at the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum; they be recorded and made available on the DOK Leipzig website during the week of the festival.
A total of some 170 films and XR works from 44 countries, including 37 world and 13 international premieres, will be screened to audiences at nine different venues in Leipzig. Included for the first time is the Regina Palast in Leipzig’s East End. This year, DOK Leipzig will again present some of the films with free admission in the East Wing of the main railway station and at the Polnisches Institut.
At all public events during the festival, the “3G” regulation for protection against COVID-19 will apply. Patrons aged 12 and over will need to show proof that they have been vaccinated or have recovered from the disease. Alternatively, admission will be possible with a negative test taken the same day at an official testing centre (no self-testing). Exceptions are the opening event at CineStar and the screenings at the Polnisches Institut, to which only vaccinated and recovered persons will be allowed entry. A nose and mouth covering must be worn at all venues prior to taking one’s seat.
Immediately after the week of the festival, a selection of this year’s festival films will be available online throughout Germany for two weeks in the DOK Stream.
The Golden Dove in the Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film in combination with €10,000 is sponsored by MDR. The Silver Dove in the Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film in combination with €6,000 is sponsored by 3sat.
The 64th edition of DOK Leipzig will open on 25 October 2021 with the international premiere of The Rhine Flows to the Mediterranean Sea, a documentary by Offer Avnon. This film describes the impressions the director had while living in Germany and the way his perspective changed when he returned to Israel. Avnon, the son of a Polish survivor of the Shoah, lived in Germany for ten years. “Never, not for a single day” was he able to forget the Holocaust during that time.
In associative montages of images and conversations with people in Germany, Poland and ultimately in Israel, this film explores persistent traumas, mechanisms of repressing the pain, and attempts at reconciliation. What kind of dialogue is possible between relatives of perpetrators and victims? How does one’s identity or membership in a community mould one’s awareness and perception? With these questions in mind after his return, Avnon also takes a different view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is visibly inscribed in the social space of his home town of Haifa.
“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,” Festival Director Christoph Terhechte states in the festival catalogue. “Offer Avnon gives fragmentary answers and each raises new questions. The search for the ‘uncanny’ he began with his film is far from over.”
Director Offer Avnon previously dealt with trauma and remembrance in his film Burden (2015). He studied acting, visual communication and film in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. For ten years, he lived in Cologne, where he took part in theatre, video, photography and street art projects.
With its themes and its dialogue-based approach, the opening film of the 64th edition of the festival allows connections to be drawn to other works in this year’s DOK Leipzig programme. The Retrospective entitled “The Jews of the Others: Divided Germany, Distributed Guilt, Dissected Images” looks at portrayals of Jewishness and treatment of the Shoah in German and German-language film productions.
The Homage to documentary film director Avi Mograbi entitled “Secret Agent Avi” and the film The Good Soldier by Silvina Landsmann in competition for the Audience Award are further productions from Israel in the programme that focus on the Middle East conflict in the past and present.
DOK Leipzig’s opening ceremony will be held at 7 pm on 25 October 2021 at CineStar 8 with director Offer Avnon attending. Additionally, there will be a free public screening of The Rhine Flows to the Mediterranean Sea at 8:30 pm at Leipzig Central Station (Osthalle), which the filmmaker and the festival director will also attend.
You’ll find more information about the opening film here: The Rhine Flows to the Mediterranean Sea
For the first time ever, the DOK Industry programme will be in hybrid form. From 25 to 29 October, some 1,800 industry professionals will meet in Leipzig as well as online. Many of the 50 or so industry events are to be held both online and onsite, in order to make it possible to once again mingle in person and at the same time network with industry representatives who are unable to come to Leipzig.
Networking and collaboration are at the heart of DOK Industry. “We aim to provide a platform that allows both on-site and online participants to enter new collaborations, gain further market intelligence and exchange ideas in an open and welcoming environment,” says DOK Industry director Nadja Tennstedt. “In doing so, we aim to strengthen the documentary community and make it easier for emerging talents and equity-seeking professionals to enter the international market.”
In terms of content, the 17th edition of Germany’s leading industry platform for the documentary film sector picks up on the themes of the previous year’s programme and carries them a step further. In autumn 2020, DOK Industry focused on the participation of equity-seeking filmmakers and discussed approaches to breaking down the power structures that permeate the documentary film industry. DOK Industry 2021 will be a time to take stock: Which processes have already been initiated? Which initiatives will strengthen the visibility of underrepresented communities? How can filmmakers of colour, of indigenous origin and from equity-seeking groups be supported and promoted? For the first time, DOK Industry is organising a programme around the use of archive material in documentary film. Some of the events will dive into various aspects such as sourcing, clearing and working with archival footage, while others will promote networking with archival researchers.
At the occasion of the Industry Talk “Generation Africa”, Don Edkins from STEPS in South Africa, Philippe Muller from ARTE and several directors will talk about films from the project of the same name by the non-profit media company STEPS. “Generation Africa” works with emerging African directors and producers to create films with new narratives about migration – from the perspective of young people from Africa, whose voices are too often absent from global discourse. Three films at DOK Leipzig were made as part of “Generation Africa”.
The podcast format, launched in 2020 for the online edition of DOK Industry, will be continued. Seven podcasts will be produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Color Collective. The podcasts will once again focus on the decolonisation of the film industry. Industry experts will discuss the limited representation of Brown LGBTQ+ stories and engage with the perspective of filmmakers from the Global South on documentaries from the Global North. Further podcasts will discuss the (lack of) access to archives given to filmmakers around the world, as well as obstacles to archival work in areas of conflict. How do wars, conflicts and totalitarian regimes threaten the preservation of archives, history and cultural identities? Hosts include Toni Bell, creator and host of the What’s Up with Docs podcast; Sridhar Rangayan, filmmaker and director of the KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival; and Claire Diao, a film critic, distributor (Sudu Connexion) and member of the Directors' Fortnight Selection Committee.
Promoting female filmmakers from equity-seeking groups is also important to the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA), which is refocussing its award, presented at DOK Leipzig for several years, in this direction. The award honours a project by a female director in the DOK Co-Pro Market which tells a story from a point of view thus far marginalised and underrepresented in the world of film and which treats its protagonists as equals.
Three further awards will be presented at DOK Industry this year. The Saxon Award for the Best Documentary Project by a Female Director and the Current Time TV Award for a project from Central or Eastern Europe also honour projects at the DOK Co-Pro Market. The DFM Work-in-Progress Prize, sponsored by D-Facto Motion, will again be presented at DOK Preview Germany.
DOK Exchange offers an impetus for immersive and interactive storytelling. For the first time, it is organised in cooperation with the community and grant platform Artizen. A live podcast will delve into selected projects that can be experienced at DOK Neuland. The conversation will focus on communal storytelling and appreciative narratives, spirituality and the social aspect of the works presented. The event will be moderated by Brigid O’Shea, co-founder of the Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) and the former director of DOK Industry. At the DOK Exchange Showcase, six interactive projects in the making will be presented to experts from the fields of research, funding, distribution, art and technology. The showcase will be moderated by René Pinnell, founder and designer of Artizen.
The DOK Previews offer a glimpse into the kaleidoscope of creative documentary film. DOK Preview Germany, in cooperation with German Films and AG DOK, presents a mix of work-in-progress, newly completed films and world premieres from the DOK Leipzig competition. DOK Preview Training presents film projects developed in European film workshops and selected in partnering international markets which are looking for festival premieres, gap financing and distribution partners – this year in cooperation with CoPro Israel, DocMontevideo, Docu Rough Cut Boutique, dok.incubator, Durban FilmMart, ESoDoc, Eurodoc and Ex Oriente. Festival representatives, buyers and commissioning editors, sales agents and distributors are once again able to discover all the films in the competitions along with other hand-picked current documentaries thanks to the DOK Film Market online video library and get in touch with filmmakers and rights holders.
At the “Meet the Experts” talks, industry representatives can broaden their knowledge of certain professions and work practices and expand their networks. This year, the focus is on impact producing, alternative distribution models and archival research.
DOK Short n’ Sweet is all about short films. At the pitch, filmmakers can present their short film projects, including documentaries, animadocs and animated films, to prominent editors, distributors, festival representatives and financiers. This year, the experts on the panel include Christine Kecher (Op-Docs, The New York Times), Maike Mia Höhne (Hamburg Short Film Festival), Sydney Neter (SND Films) and Sarah Schlüssel (Berlinale Talents / Berlinale Shorts).
The DOK Partner Presentations are an opportunity to discover new documentaries from certain regions, countries and training programmes which are in search of international partners and ready for international acquisition. The various presentations with moderated round-table feedback offer room for interaction and discussion. For the first time at DOK Industry, participants in EFM’s Doc Toolbox Programme – an EFM initiative that endows documentary filmmakers from equity-seeking groups with market intelligence, business tools and connections – will present their projects that are nearing completion. In the Chiledoc Partner Presentation backed by ProChile, Chilean filmmakers will present their latest projects. Chiledoc promotes the distribution of Chilean productions and represents the Chilean documentary film industry.
Through various networking formats, DOK Industry also offers virtual and in-person opportunities for individual meetings with industry experts, such as those from film festivals, distribution companies, TV and archival research.
The Industry Guide offers a look at DOK Leipzig’s guest list, on the festival website and will continue to grow leading up to the festival.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.
You can find more information here: DOK Industry
A total of 20 films from 21 countries have been entered in the Competition for the Audience Award Long Documentary and Animated Film and the Competition for the Audience Award Short Documentary and Animated Film. These include two world premieres and four international premieres. The feature-length films are competing for a Golden Dove, the short films for a Silver Dove.
Many of the films approach current political issues from various angles and in a range of aesthetic styles, such as in the look taken at the organisation “Breaking the Silence” in Israel and Palestine (The Good Soldier) and its polarising role in the Middle East conflict. The plight of refugees is explored from children’s perspectives in the animated film The Crossing and in the animated documentary Flee, the latter a story about a long journey, made in many stages, by one man from Afghanistan to Denmark. In Our Memory Belongs to Us, Syrian activists now in Paris use video clips to recapitulate their experiences fighting in the Syrian civil war. What Remains on the Way addresses a refugee experience outside of Europe in the challenging journey made by a mother of four from Central America towards the border between the United States and Mexico.
Various films focus on personal stories, such as 98 kg, which deals with domestic violence, and the moving animated film There Is Exactly Enough Time by Virgil Widrich, who completed the cinematic flipbook of his son Oskar Salomonowitz after the latter’s death. A family history is also revealed in Love, Dad, in which a young woman comes across a letter her father had written from prison 15 years prior and commits to answering it. In Dida, Nikola Ilić presents a sensitive portrait of his mother, a charming elderly lady from Serbia, co-directed with his wife Corina Schwingruber Ilić, whose All Inclusive was entered in the 2018 International Competition Short Film.
The Competitions for the Audience Award also bring together some films with light-hearted approaches and narrative styles, such as the true-crime story For a Fistful of Fries. In The Cars We Drove into Capitalism, Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov take a close look at a passion for cars that were manufactured under the socialist system. The two directors had a film at DOK Leipzig in 2018 with Palace for the People. The seemingly voyeuristic film The Balcony Movie by Paweł Łoziński, whose films have been screened at DOK Leipzig since 2009, inevitably produces moments of comedy. The filmmaker points his camera from a balcony on to the street and interacts with passers-by. Garages, Engines & Men by Claire Simon, who took part in the festival in 2016 with The Graduation, humorously tells of the day-to-day drama in a car-repair shop in rural France.
Fluid Life, a poetic portrait of a woman who converted a cargo ship into a houseboat on the Vltava, deals with life on and in the river. In Shallow Water also takes place on the water. The idyllic image of fishing in the winter landscape of eastern Slovakia is deceptive, as prison inmates eke out their living with it. The Gray Shrimp Report, for its part, finds traces of the Second World War on the seabed off the Belgian coast, where 35,000 tonnes of chemical munitions lie to this day and indirectly end up in delicacies.
A further cinematic exploration of the Earth’s ecosystem and the environment is 0.2 Milligrams of Gold. In the wake of a new gold rush in the forests of Brazil, filmmaker Diego Quinderé de Carvalho compares these forests to their smaller counterparts in Belgium. Based on the observation that animals live out their sexuality free of gender norms, the animated film In Nature looks at the many different types of relationships that develop among fauna.
To Pick a Flower uses photographs to engage with US-American colonial rule in the Philippines. The photographs of the island’s bountiful flora, taken from the perspective of those in power, are simultaneously inscribed with their classification and appropriation as a resource. Madrid, Bad Life looks at the marginalised and recalcitrant in the Spanish capital around 1900 and thus at the social structure encompassing all those who, despite being outsiders, were nevertheless a visible part of everyday life in the city.
This year’s audience jury, which will announce the winners at the award ceremony on 30 October, consists of Lara Hübelt, Pauline Reinhardt, Lisa Marie Rothe, Sarah Schreiner, Paula Schumann, Aviv Sheyn and Alfonso de Toro.
The Silver Dove Short Documentary and Animated Film is granted by the Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e.V.
Please find the film selection here: Competitions for the Audience Award DOK Leipzig 2021
In 2021, the films in the German Competitions at DOK Leipzig once again represent a wide variety of cinematic approaches, in terms of both their themes and their formal criteria. The film-makers’ works document current political crises, seek out historical vestiges and sketch introspective portraits.
The selection committee has nominated a total of 15 productions for the German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film and the German Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film. Among them are eleven world premieres, one European and three German premieres. Female film-makers are heavily represented in the German Competition, having directed seven of the eight long documentary films nominated.
This year as usual, some of the productions focus on current political issues. Topics include the situation of refugees in Camp Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos (Nasim), the migration factor for families in the Dominican Republic (Los cuatro vientos) and the protests against Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus (Handbook). Some films draw a connection between political and aesthetic discourse, for example in works about female body hair (Happytrail), a socialist monument in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin (Head Fist Flag – Perspectives on the Thälmann Memorial) and the colour of the 100 yuan note (Pink Mao), the largest denomination of Renminbi banknotes in the People’s Republic of China. Historical vestiges, memories and traditions are traced by two other films in present-day Silesia (Time Before Land) and in the jungles of Vietnam (Dust of Modern Life).
Other works in the competitions portray extraordinary individuals and are partly the result of intimate relationships. Two films, for example, deal in very different ways with the documentary images of a past love (Everyman and I and Reality Must Be Addressed). They reflect upon how the camera creates intimacy and distance, play and authenticity in the rapport between the film-maker and those filmed. Two other works focus on soundscapes by portraying a musician (A Sound of My Own) who continues her father’s legendary band project Embryo, and a passionate instrument-maker (75/1).
Some of the directors involved have previously had films screened at DOK Leipzig. Katharina Pethke, for example, returns to Leipzig with Everyman and I, a personal work about and involving actor Philipp Hochmair. In 2011 she had received the Golden Dove in the German Competition for the film Louisa; last year, the director was a guest at DOK Industry, the festival’s industry platform. This time Betina Kuntzsch presents Head Fist Flag – Perspectives on the Thälmann Memorial, after her film Spirit Away was awarded the Golden Dove in the International Competition Animated Documentary in 2015. Other film-makers such as Malte Stein (Flood, German Competition Short Film 2018) and Johanna Seggelke (Bibi Must Go, co-directed with Marie Zrenner, German Competition Short Film 2020) have previously been nominated in Leipzig.
This year’s jury consists of film-maker Maria Speth, festival director Gudrun Sommer and film lecturer and director Carsten Möller. The jurors will jointly determine the winning films of the Golden and Silver Dove in the German Competitions of DOK Leipzig.
The feature and documentary film director Maria Speth had an entry in the German Competition of DOK Leipzig in 2010 with 9 Lives and was awarded the DEFA Sponsoring Prize. In 2021, she received a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for her documentary Mr Bachmann and His Class, which has been showing in cinemas across Germany since 16 September. Gudrun Sommer founded and directs doxs!, the documentary film festival for children and young people in Duisburg. Together with Christian Koch, she was also in charge of the Duisburg Film Week in 2019 and 2020. Carsten Möller is a creative associate in video art at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. He teaches film editing, screenwriting and cinematography, and also creates his own films and screenplays.
This year’s award-winning films will receive their honours on the Saturday of the festival (30 October 2021). The films in the German Competition are nominated for a Golden Dove, the films in the German Competition Short Film for a Silver Dove.
Certain films have also been nominated for awards sponsored by partners: the DEFA Sponsoring Prize, the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, the ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, the “Leipziger Ring” Film Prize from the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution, the Young Eyes Film Award and the mephisto 97.6 Award for best animated film.
The Golden Dove in the Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film is granted by Weltkino Filmverleih GmbH.
Please find the film selection here: German Competitions DOK Leipzig 2021
DOK Leipzig’s 2021 film programme will take place entirely in the city’s cinemas, once again placing greater emphasis on film history with the showing of a Retrospective and two Matinees that had to be postponed last year. Meanwhile, film series outside the competitions will explore the interfaces between animation art and music history, focus on outstanding film artists, and offer exciting discoveries for children and young people.
Several programmes deal with the thematic complex of remembrance, reconciliation and commemoration. Planned for 2020 but impossible to realise in the hybrid festival edition, the Retrospective will run this year instead. Under the title ”The Jews of the Others: Divided Germany, Distributed Guilt, Dissected Images“ it spans a historical arc from the National Socialist propaganda film Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area, 1944) to the documentary film Das leere Haus (The Empty House, 2004) about neighbourhood resistance to a Jewish community centre in prosperous Leipzig after the turn of the millennium.
The title of the series refers to attributions of Jewishness and the examination of the Shoah in German and German-language film productions, especially during the years that the country was divided. How did the two new German republics look at the old common guilt? What ideological and social premises shaped this view? These questions arise, for example, in relation to the GDR TV production Aktion J (Operation J, 1961) by Walter Heynowski, about West German Under-Secretary of State Hans Globke’s Nazi past. Continuities of the fascist past are also confronted in the West German short documentary Es muß ein Stück vom Hitler sein (That Must Be a Piece of Hitler, 1963), which features biting commentary by Walter Krüttner about tourism in Hitler’s beloved Obersalzberg region during the post-war period. Guests with (film) historical expertise are invited to all film talks.
“In essence, we are talking about appropriation in relation to historical material, but also to Jewish suffering,” curator Sylvia Görke says. Co-curator Ralph Eue adds: “Harun Farocki once spoke of images that are meant to testify against themselves. This thought has always preoccupied us in the selection and contrapuntal compilation of the films.”
The Retrospective is funded by the The Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany. During the festival week, the series will be complemented by the study presentation "Eichmann and the Cold War on East and West German Television". The Matinee Saxon State Archive will highlight the topic with local film examples of the GDR’s culture of commemorating the National Socialist past.
The Homage of the 64th festival edition is dedicated to renowned Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi, who also has a family connection to Leipzig. Mograbi's mother fled from Leipzig to Palestine as a child to escape the Nazis. With Once I Entered a Garden, Z32 and The First 54 Years - An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation, three works will be presented in which Mograbi takes a critical and ironic approach to dealing with Israel's politics in the Middle East conflict. He will also address his form of documentary self-dramatisation in a master class.
Another master class entitled "Editing Makes the Film” will feature the renowned editor Mary Stephen. She will present Nude at Heart, her own edited version of the film Odoriko by Yoichiro Okutani. How do considerably different artistic visions emerge from the same documentary footage? In the juxtaposition of director's cut and editor's cut, Mary Stephen will address the editor’s role between serviceable craft and creative co-authorship.
There was already a foretaste of the DEFA Matinee in honour of Kurt Tetzlaff in 2020. This year, the programme “Kurt Tetzlaff – Reports from the Time of Change” will be realised in cooperation with the DEFA Foundation. A short film and two feature-length films by the director will be shown as a double feature of his last two DEFA productions: Im Durchgang – Protokoll für das Gedächtnis (In Transit: Report for Posterity, 1990) and Im Übergang – Protokoll einer Hoffnung (In Transition: Report on a Hope, 1991). Tetzlaff's work has been shown several times in Leipzig and won a Silver Dove in 1975, though some of the director's films were denied screening at the festival during the GDR era. Nevertheless, DOK Leipzig was always "an encounter with the world" for Tetzlaff, who was a member of the festival committee from 1973 to 1989.
With the Re-Visions series, DOK Leipzig will take another look at its own festival history from a contemporary perspective. The 1995 award-winning archive film Mother Dao, the Turtlelike collages visual and audio documents about Dutch colonial history in Indonesia. The film will be rescreened and director Vincent Monnikendam will be presented with the Silver Dove, which did not reach him by post at the time.
The animation film programme Modular & Modified: Animation and Musique Concrète will be a foray into pop culture, research and sound labs, traveling all the way to the inner worlds of humans and machines. "Together with the audience, we want to rummage with relish in what are probably the most shimmering departments of media history," say André Eckardt and co-curator Cornelia Friederike Müller (aka CFM). "We want to explore how animation and electronic music are related.”
Both art forms have manipulated and developed conventional recording techniques from the beginning: Music and animated images have been looped, deformed, slowed down, sped up, played backwards and forwards, and reassembled. The three Modular & Modified programmes bring together Oscar-winning animated films, cult pop culture phenomena such as the TV series The Shadoks, and musical revolutions by musique concrète composers, as well as Björk, Matmos and Max Cooper. In addition, Leipzig artists Connie Walker aka CFM and SAOU TV will give a live audio-visual concert.
In the Animation Perspectives series, two filmmakers will once again enter an artistic dialogue with their works. Video and photo artists Claudia Larcher and Randa Maroufi are united by their use of subtle, sometimes hidden animation techniques. With virtual camera movements, photo collages or tableaux vivants, they create transitional worlds with an idiosyncratic view of social spaces. In Heim, for example, Larcher explores traces of life in her parents' house. And in The Park, Maroufi freezes the creative poses of young people into semi-living sculptures with a 360° camera view. Both artists have previously been guests at DOK Leipzig. Curated by André Eckardt, the Animation Perspectives series, in its third year, is dedicated to marginal phenomena in animation art.
DOK Leipzig also offers a whole spectrum of animation and documentary works to the youngest film fans. In the Kids DOK series, the festival shows five programmes for audiences aged 5 and up, 8 and up, 10 and up, 12 and up, and 14 and up. "I am thrilled at how seriously children and young people are taken in these contributions," curator Lina Dinkla says. There will be a colourful mix of animated films for preschool-aged children, and documentaries with young protagonists that offer schoolchildren and young people diverse insights into other ways of life.
The Doc Alliance Selection will present the films Gabi, Between Ages 8 and 13 by Engeli Broberg, and Looking for Horses by Stefan Pavlović. Both works were nominated for the 2021 Doc Alliance Awards, which were presented in Cannes on 13 July. The Doc Alliance festival network was founded in 2008 to promote artistic-creative documentary film and its diversity in cooperation with seven renowned documentary film festivals: CPH:DOX Copenhagen, DOK Leipzig, FID Marseille, Doclisboa, Ji.hlava IDFF, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF and Visions du Réel Nyon.
DOK Leipzig would like to thank the The Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany, the German Broadcast Archive, the Saxon State Archive and the DEFA Foundation for their funding and support of the film series.
Please find the film selection here: Our Film Programmes 2021
On 7 September, the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution announced that 2021 will mark the tenth year that the foundation awards its “Leipziger Ring” prize at DOK Leipzig. The award honours an artistic documentary film "that deals with the subject of democracy in an extraordinary way and motivates people to take on social responsibility and initiate processes of change,” the foundation said. It also often highlights the achievements of filmmakers who have courageously made their films with great personal commitment in the face of opposition and restrictions on free speech and the media.
The "Leipziger Ring" film prize has been awarded annually since 2010 as part of the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig), and includes prize money of 2,500 euros. In 2016 and 2020, however, the award had to be suspended.
"We are extremely pleased that the ‘Leipziger Ring’ film award can be continued with the 64th festival edition," festival director Christoph Terhechte said. "With this year's festival, DOK Leipzig returns to the cinemas, and thus to human encounters, exchange and discussion about films and life experiences. The festival sees itself as a piece of lived democracy and therefore also a fitting partner to the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution."
A jury appointed by the foundation's board of directors will choose the winning film from among a selection of nominations by DOK Leipzig, which runs from 25 to 31 October 2021 in film venues across the city. The "Leipziger Ring" prize will be presented at the festival's partner awards ceremony on 30 October at the Regina-Palast.
The award commemorates the many people who peacefully demonstrated in 1989 for democratic reforms in central Leipzig and numerous other places in former East Germany, risking their lives, health and freedom.
The winners of the Doc Alliance Awards have been announced on 13 July at Cannes Docs, the documentary-focused industry programme of the Cannes Film Festival. Doc Alliance is a network consisting of seven of the most influential European documentary film festivals, each of which nominated two films for the awards.
This year’s Doc Alliance Award — Best Feature Film went for the first time to the category nomination by DOK Leipzig: “The Blunder of Love” by Rocco Di Mento, which competed for the Audience Award at the festival in 2020. In his search through family archives, Rocco Di Mento unearths old 8mm home movies, an unpublished novel, various love letters and a whole host of long-suppressed feelings – a mixture that begins to develop a dynamic of its own. The issue becomes not just about the search for the love of one’s life, but also the question of what holds people together beyond their relationship status and degree of kinship.
“’The Blunder of Love’ is simply gripping and ingeniously constructed,” says DOK Leipzig programme coordinator Lina Dinkla about the festival’s selection. “Rocco Di Mento tells his personal family story, but it is also a universal contribution to subjects such as shaky family truths in which almost everyone can find themselves.”
The awards jury also praised the filmmaker’s “charming curiosity that evolves into a genuine deconstruction of myth and a discrete revelation of family secrets and trauma and how it is passed on from generation to generation.”
The Doc Alliance Award – Best Short Film went to Tatiana Chistova for “Bless You!”, which was nominated by Millennium Docs Against Gravity. Against the backdrop of Saint Petersburg’s back courtyards during the Corona lockdown, Chistova fuses recordings of the almost empty city with calls to a municipal hotline, highlighting that in a system that neglects its weakest members, the virus is not the only threat. DOK Leipzig congratulates the filmmaker, who also competed for the Short Film Audience Award at DOK Leipzig with the film in 2020.
The Doc Alliance Award was presented for the first time in 2008. Members of the Doc Alliance network include: CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava IDFF and Visions du Réel. Each of the festivals have traditionally chosen one feature-length film and, for the first time this year, one short (up to 30 minutes) by an emerging filmmaker from their most recent lineup. The Doc Alliance Award - Best Feature Film and Doc Alliance Award - Best Short Film prizes are endowed with 8,000 EUR for the directors to spend on their next project. Additionally, each of the Doc Alliance festivals has committed to screen at least 3 films among the selections at their upcoming editions.
Simultaneously with the award ceremony on 13 July, the new joint website docalliance.org was launched to highlight the network and its festival members.
“The Blunder of Love” and “Bless You!” will be available on the DAFilms.com platform until 18 July, 2021 along with a selection of the other nominated films.
In a move that sends a positive signal for the resumption of cinema culture in the wake of the pandemic, DOK Leipzig will return to big screens in the fall. First, the complete film programme will air in selected Leipzig venues during the festival week in late October. And afterwards, "DOK Stream" will launch online to serve those who wish to either deepen their festival experience or visit DOK Leipzig wholly online. The virtual film programme will feature a selection of festival films accessible to the German public during the first two weeks of November.
Taking the festival’s evolution a step further, the 17th annual DOK Industry Programme for film professionals will also be the first major German platform of its kind to combine the best of both worlds, taking place in-person and online in 2021.
"This year's film programme is primarily intended to happen in the cinemas. With this, we are promoting a physical fresh start after a cultural dry spell," festival director Christoph Terhechte says, adding that directors who visit Leipzig will discuss films in person with the audience in the movie theatres. "But unlike in 2020, the online and offline film programme will not take place in parallel, because in 2021 we want to give priority to the cinemas. Nevertheless, we will include the best parts of last year’s hybrid offerings, as we assume that not all directors will be able to travel internationally," Terhechte says. Audiences will once again have the option of viewing recordings of talks and other online formats to whet their appetites for the films. Regarding the additional online film programme available for streaming after the festival week, Terhechte says: "The 'DOK Stream' offering will enable a new, condensed kind of online festival that is based on last year's experience."
In 2021, the number of festival films is expected to rise again to more than 200, though still with a reduced programme in some areas compared to 2019, for both practical and artistic reasons. In addition to the competitions, other curated programmes will be included in the lineup. The Retrospective, for example, which had to be suspended in 2020, will be shown on the big screen once again. "We’re hoping for adjusted hygiene concepts and a further easing of the situation by fall, which will allow a greater utilisation of the cinemas compared to last year," Terhechte says.
Film professionals will be able to take advantage of all the established formats of DOK Industry at the end of October. These include the DOK Co-Pro Market, the short film pitch DOK Short n' Sweet, the rough-cut presentations DOK Preview, the DOK Film Market, the XR conference DOK Exchange, Meet the Experts, and talks. Partner presentations and podcasts will also be in the mix. And almost all formats will be simultaneously hosted both on-site and online. In 2020, DOK Industry Programme took place entirely online.
"With a hybrid offering, we want to facilitate the industry's great desire to meet in person again, while ensuring that everyone can participate regardless of possible travel restrictions or other hurdles," says Nadja Tennstedt, who took on leadership of DOK Industry's offerings this year. "The last 15 months have been marked by huge upheavals for the audiovisual industry. The DOK Industry team is aware of the great challenges facing the international documentary community and wants to promote cooperation and togetherness among all participants with the first hybrid Industry Programme. In doing so, we’ll focus on bringing offline and online participants together in a way that creates enriching and effective meetings that will also be a lot of fun."
The DOK Industry team aims to maintain existing partnerships and establish new ones with a focus on diversity and inclusion. "One of our central concerns is including new groups of participants and making DOK Industry offerings accessible to people from marginalised groups," Nadja Tennstedt says. And with regard to combining the online and offline realms, she adds: "Hybridity is here to stay. We are actively learning along with the documentary community just how important this development is in terms of funding, distribution, sustainability and inclusion. We see the hybrid edition of DOK Industry as an exciting start to sustainable development."
The 64th edition of DOK Leipzig will take place from 25 to 31 October. "DOK Stream" is scheduled to follow from 1 to 14 November.
Starting this month, Nadja Tennstedt will be in charge of DOK Leipzig's industry offerings. She succeeds long-time head Brigid O'Shea.
Active in the film sector for many years, Tennstedt has focused increasingly on documentary and independent film. Most recently she coordinated The DocSalon, the documentary film platform at the Berlinale's European Film Market (EFM), where she led networking and community building activities within the documentary industry.
"We are fortunate to welcome Nadja Tennstedt to our team, an experienced collaborator who is highly regarded by documentary creatives around the world, and who has earned her reputation through passion, imagination and her dedicated advocacy for diversity," festival director Christoph Terhechte says.
Before joining DocSalon, Tennstedt, who studied film production in New York, worked in numerous fields of film distribution. She directed international sales and acquisitions at Milestone Films, and was in charge of marketing at Zeitgeist Films, a distributor of independent features and documentaries. After returning to Europe from the USA, she worked for film festivals such as Locarno and the Berlinale.
"I participated in DOK Industry as a professional visitor in the past and was enchanted. With a friendly and collaborative atmosphere full of international participants, it offers an efficient industry platform that I believe in,” Tennstedt says. With an eye to the future, she adds: "Changes in the international film industry, which have been greatly accelerated by the pandemic, pose great challenges to the entire documentary community. At the same time, they present opportunities to rethink and change existing models and structures. I am very much looking forward to accompanying and promoting these developments alongside Christoph Terhechte and all of my colleagues to support the doc community. My goal is to constantly develop DOK Industry's offerings and adapt them to changes in the financing, production and distribution of documentaries."
Tennstedt has also recently been involved with DocSalon in rethinking existing structures and developing inclusive models. Together with Themba Bhebhe, head of the EFM Diversity & Inclusion Initiative, she developed the DocSalon Toolbox Programme, which was established to help filmmakers from marginalised groups and the Global South enter the international film market with the help of tailored programmes. In collaboration with archive producer Monika Preischl she introduced Archive Day, Germany's first business platform dedicated to cinematic work with archival material. "Particularly important to me in my work is a focus on the participation by creatives from underrepresented groups and challenging power structures that exist in the documentary industry,” Tennstedt says.
"I would especially like to thank Brigid O'Shea, who has led DOK Industry for the past ten years and who, together with her team, has made the platform a wonderful place for the doc community," Tennstedt adds.
Brigid O’Shea, the long-time Head of DOK Industry, is leaving DOK Leipzig at the end of February to dedicate herself to new endeavours. As part of the DOK Leipzig team for 11 years, O’Shea has made a lasting impact on the festival's film industry platform. She first joined as the coordinator of industry offerings in 2011, taking over as Head of DOK Industry in 2015.
O'Shea continued the expansion of DOK Industry’s programme internationally and solidified its position as Germany's leading industry platform for documentary film. Her passions were equal participation for all, creating a strong sense of community, and of course the great pleasure of personal exchange and networking between film professionals. O’Shea developed numerous formats for the festival, such as the DOK Preview rough cut presentations and the short film pitch DOK Short n' Sweet. The heart of her work was the DOK Co-Pro Market, which takes place each year as the festival begins with around 900 individual meetings. With each of these programmes, O’Shea was always on the lookout for the best-fitting and most sustainable financing and distribution channels for artistic documentaries.
"We are deeply grateful to Brigid O'Shea for her many years of creative work. She has developed DOK Industry into one of the most important international industry platforms for documentary film and created a place in the festival that is known for its commitment, warm atmosphere and intensive exchange," festival director Christoph Terhechte said. "Her approach has always been the expression of an emancipative festival policy. We see it as our challenge to further develop the programme in this direction."
O'Shea put a great deal of energy into the equal promotion of women directors, and several development awards were launched in this area during her time at DOK Leipzig. Her main goal was to open doors for artists regardless of gender or origin. Promoting underrepresented filmmakers and questioning power structures were imperatives that she pursued wholeheartedly.
“Over the past decade, to grow DOK Industry Programme and make a small contribution to the long history of DOK Leipzig has been an absolute honour and privilege. I want to thank my immediate team and colleagues for their support and hard work. Leaving such a beautiful job was not an easy decision, but I hope I am leaving fertile earth for those who come next,” O’Shea said. “Most of all, I want say thank you to the partners, accredited guests, and of course the amazing projects and films that have been through our markets, meetings and events over the years, of which there are too many to mention. I'll be looking forward to meeting you all in Leipzig for a glass of wine as soon as we can.”
O'Shea will now focus on her work with the Documentary Association of Europe (DAE), of which she is a founding member. Launched in February 2020 as a network for European documentary professionals, it aims to represent their interests within the international film and creative industries, and to strengthen the transfer of knowledge within this community.
DOK Leipzig will announce personnel changes for the DOK Industry section soon. The 64th edition of the festival will take place from 25 to 31 October 2021.
Images of DOK Leipzig and of Brigid O’Shea can be found in our press download area.
On November 14, the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig ended with the last of the festival films on demand.
A total of 47.615 visitors took advantage of the hybrid edition of the festival — in person in Leipzig and on the Web. Of these, 5.002 visitors attended cinema screenings. This year’s venues included the festival cinemas, the Grassimuseum and the East Wing of the main railway station. 674 people visited DOK Neuland, the festival’s extended reality exhibition, where they could explore VR installations, 360° films and a sound installation.
The festival’s online offerings included film screenings, discussions with filmmakers and industry offerings such as the DOK Co-Pro Market.
Taking stock, festival director Christoph Terhechte says: “This edition of the festival was a big adventure for us. Organising a festival under these new circumstances meant a huge adjustment for the entire team as well as for all the filmmakers, partners and service providers involved. However, the positive reactions of the visitors and the fantastic level of interest among the public tell us that this huge effort was worth it.”
The online audience, for example, submitted photos of private film screenings via social media, and there was a lot of positive and cordial feedback. “We would like to share this wonderful feedback with the filmmakers, who have lost much of their direct contact with the audience. You deserve special appreciation.”
Despite not being in the same place, the audience and the filmmakers had numerous opportunities to engage in dialogue. One of the challenges facing the hybrid edition was to bring together the cinema audience, the directors at home and the online audience for 12 live film talks. Numerous other live elements also connected the filmmakers and their audiences. “We were very moved by the receptiveness and attentiveness of everyone who took part in the discussions, and we are proud that the connection between online and offline audiences functioned so well,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. Pre-recorded talks and pre-produced segments rounded out the programme.
Nearly 1,700 accredited professionals took advantage of the festival’s industry offerings at DOK Industry and were networked online across different time zones. The offerings included the DOK Co-Pro Market, the presentations of rough cuts at DOK Preview, the DOK Exchange conference and, for the first time, a series of podcasts on topics relating to the industry.
Looking back, DOK Industry director Brigid O’Shea says: “We thank everyone for their commitment to making this year’s DOK Industry programme a success. Turning up for meetings across time zones, delivering news about the hard production and distribution reality, new partnerships, honouring old commitments. This year was an enormous team effort. I thank all those who made their contributions to a successful week — in particular, the dedication and unending patience of the DOK team.”
This year’s edition of the festival also included the DOK im Knast and DOK Education programmes. For the first time, a training course for teachers on the use of documentary films in the classroom was held in collaboration with Vision Kino. The junior reporters of DOK Spotters were dedicated to covering the festival. Films were also screened in accessible venues this year.
A total of 150 films and XR works were shown during the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig.
Christoph Terhechte concludes: “The team has seldom faced such a huge challenge, but we all learned an enormous amount in a short time. We will apply the know-how we’ve acquired to future editions of the festival.”
The award-winning films of the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig have been chosen. This year, even after the week-long festival ends in cinemas, all of the films in competition can still be watched online.
The film “Downstream to Kinshasa” by Dieudo Hamadi has received the Golden Dove in the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film. This co-production from the Democratic Republic of Congo, France and Belgium focuses on war-disabled people from Kisangani in the DR Congo. In 2000, Ugandan and Rwandan troops battled each other there in what is known as the Six-Day War. After waiting in vain for almost twenty years, some of the civilian victims set off on a long journey to Kinshasa to demand compensation. Hamadi has presented his films at a number of prestigious film festivals.
The jury praised the filmmaker “for bringing intimacy and dignity to a Sisyphean struggle that is invisible in the broader world, here delivered to the screen with the clear trust of its protagonists and the commitment of the filmmaker”.
The 10,000-euro award is sponsored by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. Dr Ulrich Brochhagen, head of MDR’s department for history, documentaries and Eastern Europe, attended the award ceremony. The recipient of the Golden Dove in the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film is now eligible to be nominated for the annual ACADEMY AWARDS®, provided the Academy’s requirements are met.
“Downstream to Kinshasa” also received the Prize of the Interreligious Jury at DOK Leipzig.
The Silver Dove for best long documentary or animated film by an up-and-coming director in the International Competition Long Film has gone to the Argentinian production “The Poets Visit Juana Bignozzi”. The film was directed by writer and journalist Mercedes Halfon and by Laura Citarella, who is known internationally as the producer of “La Flor”. This documentary tells the story of a young poet who seeks to pass on the artistic legacy of Juana Bignozzi, a renowned poet. The jury emphasised “the inventive ways in which this film advances its search for a legacy even as its process unravels before our eyes,” noting “a freshness and energy that recall the French Nouvelle Vague”. The award was sponsored in conjunction with 6,000 euros from the broadcaster 3sat, which presented a video message at the award ceremony.
The Golden Dove in the “Golden Section”, the newly introduced Competition for the Audience Award Long Documentary or Animated Film in conjunction with 3,000 euros has gone to the Czech production “A New Shift” by Jindřich Andrš. The director focuses on a miner who, after 21 years of employment, is retraining to become a programmer, because the mine was closed down for economic reasons. “A New Shift” has also been awarded the MDR Film Prize.
In the International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film, the French-Nigerian co-production “Trouble Sleep” by Alain Kassanda, a rhythmic portrait of life in Ibadan, has been awarded a Golden Dove for best documentary film, while the Polish film “I’m Here” by Julia Orlik about a dying woman surrounded by her family has been awarded a Golden Dove for best animated film. Kassanda and Orlik have each received 3,000 euros in prize money. These winning films are also eligible for nomination for the annual ACADEMY AWARDS®, provided the Academy’s requirements are met.
The Silver Dove in the German Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film, in conjunction with 1,500 euros in prize money, has been awarded to “Erwin” by Jan Soldat, a Austrian-German co-production. In this film, the director offers a portrait of an aging man who spends most of his time in a mobile home in his front garden, indulging in erotic online encounters with men.
The Silver Dove in the newly introduced “Golden Section” Competition for the Audience Award Short Documentary and Animated Film, has gone to the animated film “Step Into the River” by Weijia Ma, a Chinese-French co-production that explores China’s one-child policy from the perspective of two young girls. The Silver Dove, which comes with 1,500 euros in prize money, was donated by the Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e. V. The deputy chairman of its board of directors, Jens Kesseler, attended the award ceremony.
The Golden and Silver Doves were presented in a hybrid award ceremony in a cinema auditorium which the juries and filmmakers joined remotely. The statuettes will be sent to the award-winners by post in the coming days.
For the first time, a panel of cinema enthusiasts representing the DOK Leipzig audience chose films that would receive a Golden Dove and a Silver Dove. This audience jury attended the award ceremony in the cinema.
The award ceremony for the Golden and Silver Doves was broadcast live on the Internet parallel to the physical event and remains available after the event on the festival website.
All of the award-winning films as well as the remaining films offered online will continue to be available on the Web after the week-long festival ends in cinemas. The final films of the festival will be shown online on 14 November.
The presentation of the partner awards was held in a strictly virtual environment. The recipients of the partner awards are:
Partner Awards for Documentary and Animated Films in the Competitions
DEFA Sponsoring Prize (4,000 euros): “Rift Finfinnee” by Daniel Kötter, Ethiopia, Germany 2020.
Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize (2,000 euros): “The Guardian” by Martina Priessner, Germany 2020.
MDR Film Prize (3,000 euros): “A New Shift” by Jindřich Andrš, Czech Republic 2020.
Prize of the Interreligious Jury (1,500 euros): “Downstream to Kinshasa” by Dieudo Hamadi, DR Congo, France, Belgium 2020.
ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness (2,500 euros): “80.000 Schnitzels” by Hannah Schweier, Germany 2020.
Young Eyes Film Award (2,000 euros): “Operation Moonbird” by Dustin Lose, Germany 2020.
International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI): “Vicenta” by Darío Doria, Argentina 2020.
Mephisto 97.6 Audience Award: “Bad Mood” by Loris Giuseppe Nese, Italy 2020.
Gedanken-Aufschluss: Long Film: “Robin’s Hood” by Jasmin Baumgartner, Austria 2020; Short Film: “Riven Threads” by Deborah Jeromin, Germany 2020.
DOK Industry awards
As part of the platform DOK Industry, three awards were presented during the festival week.
Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts (5,000 euros): “XiXi” by Fan Wu (Taiwan, Philippines).
Honorary mention: “Bright Future” by Andra Popescu (Romania).
Zonta Club Leipzig Elster Female Talent Development Prize (1,000 euros): “The Daughter of the Volcano” by Jenifer de la Rosa (Spain, Colombia).
D-Facto Motion Works-in-Progress Prize (post-production grant of 10,000 euros): “Viral” by Udi Nir & Sagi Bornstein (Germany, Israel).
A total of 150 films and extended-reality projects were shown at the Leipzig venues during the week of the festival.
Furthermore, this is the first time that the festival has had an online component. All of the festival films can be watched online even after the close of the festival week, with the last of them available until 14 November.
Today, on Monday, 26 October 2020, the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig began at 4 pm. The opening event, held without an audience, can be viewed on the festival website.
Alongside festival director Christoph Terhechte and the head of DOK Industry, Brigid O’Shea, speakers at the opening ceremony included Barbara Klepsch, the Saxon State Minister for Culture and Tourism, and Dr Skadi Jennicke, the mayor and cultural alderman of the City of Leipzig. The event was moderated by Knut Elstermann.
During the virtual opening ceremony, State Minister Barbara Klepsch presented the 5,000-euro Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts. Director Fan Wu received the award for the film project “XiXi” (Taiwan, Philippines). A jury had decided in advance which film would receive the award. Projects selected for the DOK Co-Pro Market were eligible.
Addressing the audience by video, Barbara Klepsch emphasised the festival’s importance: “Now in its 63rd edition, DOK Leipzig is continuing a tradition that has contributed significantly to the festival’s worldwide renown. A considerable number and variety of programmes are among the aspects that distinguish this festival from other events.” Referring to the change in the way the festival is being staged, the State Minister said: “Even though the festival will not be conducted in the usual way, it is still catering to the need of many people to partake in cultural activities. Our ministry supports the preservation of the local cultural scene, particularly in this exceptional situation. Institutions like DOK Leipzig breathe life into this scene, which sends an important signal. For this, I offer you my most sincere thanks.”
In a video statement, Dr Skadi Jennicke, the City of Leipzig’s cultural alderman, honoured the commitment shown by the city’s cultural professionals during the pandemic: “Last year, when the Leipzig City Council chose you, Christoph Terhechte, to be the new director of DOK Leipzig, who could have imagined how 2020 would turn out and which loss we have to accept? I am deeply impressed when I see how cultural institutions are looking for ways to counteract this and keep cultural programmes afloat. I would like to thank all those who have gone down this path from the bottom of my heart. I salute the inventiveness, the perseverance, the manifest solidarity and the responsibility you have taken on.”
Christoph Terhechte announced at the start of the festival that the proceeds from ticket sales for online screenings would be passed on to the rights holders of the films in competition: “We wish to help films gain visibility, especially this year, when lots of filmmakers are facing a situation that threatens their very existence — even if this means that we cannot conduct a festival in the usual way. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the filmmakers for the impressive works they’ve entrusted to us. Engaging with what we have seen and immersing ourselves in different perspectives will create bonds between us across the distance.” The festival director concluded: “Of course, we hope that everything will run as smoothly as possible and that everything will work out according to plan. I wish all of us an inspiring festival.”
Commenting on the deployment of this year’s industry offerings, DOK Industry director Brigid O’Shea said: “It has been an enormous challenge for us to put our bespoke international meeting place online in a way that is fair and accessible to all accredited guests. The learning curve has been enormous. We wish our guests productive and joyful days in our digital infrastructure, and feel like we’ve broken ground on an entirely new era of networking and business-making for animated and documentary filmmakers around the globe.”
All of the films can be seen in Leipzig cinemas until 1 November and will be available online for 14 days after their respective premieres. Free screenings at the main railway station are also part of the festival, as is the XR exhibition DOK Neuland. This year, DOK Leipzig is screening a total of 150 films and XR projects.
This year, all of the festival’s offerings for the film industry will be moved online.
As usual, there will be numerous talks and discussions relating to the programme of films and the documentary film industry. In the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, live talks with the filmmakers will be held in the cinema auditorium following the respective premieres. Webcast technology will allow the directors to talk directly to both the cinema audience and viewers at home.
Pre-recorded film talks will also be available online. To get you in the mood for the festival programme, dok-leipzig.de also features introductions to the different programmes by the selection committee along with Director’s Short Cuts, short video greetings from the filmmakers.
The revised programme structure of the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig goes hand in hand with new awards. Two of the Silver Doves, an award introduced this year, are funded by first-time sponsors of DOK Leipzig.
3sat is sponsoring the Silver Dove in conjunction with 6,000 euros for the best feature-length documentary or animated film by an up-and-coming director, thus reaffirming the broadcaster’s commitment to talented international directors.
The Friends of DOK Leipzig will also be sponsoring an award for the first time. The Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e. V. is sponsoring the Silver Dove, worth 1,500 euros, in the Golden Section competition for the audience award for best short documentary and animated film. The award-winning films in the newly introduced Golden Section competitions will for the first time be chosen by people from Leipzig who have applied to sit on the jury.
A longtime award sponsor at DOK Leipzig is Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, which among other things sponsors the 10,000-euro Golden Dove in the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film. MDR is also the exclusive media partner for radio and TV.
DOK Leipzig also presents numerous awards of partner organisations. A total of 22 awards are presented at DOK Leipzig, five of them as part of DOK Industry to promote film projects. Festival director Christoph Terhechte would like to thank all of DOK Leipzig’s partners and sponsors: “This year’s edition of our festival will be held under extraordinary conditions. Its realisation depends all the more on the funding, grants and contributions in kind from our partners and sponsors, whom we would like to thank warmly for their support.”
DOK Leipzig continues to receive generous funding this year. The main supporters are once again the city of Leipzig, which is also the proprietor of Leipziger Dok-Filmwochen GmbH. The Free State of Saxony has also been a main supporter of DOK Leipzig for many years. In addition, the Saxon Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism allocates project funds for programmes of inclusion in order to facilitate the participation of everyone interested in film. This measure is co-financed by tax revenue according to the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament. A main supporter this year are once again the EU programme Creative Europe Media, the Central German Media Fund and the federal government’s Commissioner for Culture and Media: they all provide crucial support to the festival and its offerings for the film industry. Furthermore, the festival is able to count on the commitment of a large number of other supporters, sponsors and partners; all of them do their part to make everything that the festival offers a reality.
PŸUR is providing support on the technical side of the hybrid festival as a premium partner. The company will provide the Wi-Fi at festival venues and will offer crucial assistance to DOK Leipzig in the implementation of live streaming this year at the CineStar.
Big Cinema is again assisting the festival in processes of digitalisation and cinema playout and is in charge of the technical and organisational aspects of the film screenings in the East Wing (Osthalle) of the main railway station. ECE Promenaden Hauptbahnhof Leipzig is also facilitating the free film screenings in the East Wing. In addition to films in competition, the films that are part of a special programme called “Genius Loci: Train Stations, Films and Progress” will be presented exclusively in the East Wing of the main station. The Genius Loci programme of films on the subject of industrial heritage is supported by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony. This measure is co-financed by tax revenues according to the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament.
DOK Leipzig enjoys particular visibility around the city thanks to the cooperation of its regional printing partner, MaXxprint.
The German Foreign Office is a further sponsor of the festival, and ZDF has generously supported the festival for years.
The SLM (Saxon State Agency for Private Broadcasting and New Media) is once again a strategic partner, sponsoring the festival’s numerous offers for young talent. These include the offerings dedicated to up-and-coming talent that are part of the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, the master class, the DOK Spotters, the school screenings and DOK Neuland. The Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin will be helping to make this year’s master class possible.
DOK Neuland has been supported by ARTE since its inception. Using new digital technologies for innovative storytelling is a major objective of the European culture channel. Partnering with DOK Neuland in the area of technology is Grover, a Berlin-based technology rental company that has been providing digital artists, filmmakers and designers flexible access to technical equipment since 2017. DOK Neuland also receives funding from MDR Media, the US Consulate in Leipzig and Sennheiser.
Further partners that support DOK Leipzig with financial and non-cash contributions are also instrumental to its success. The infobox next to the market square is made possible by modulbox mo systeme. For years, loyal partners of DOK Leipzig have included such companies as Computer Leipzig, Xchange Technology Rentals and CineStar. The ver.di union of film-industry workers has also long been a partner of DOK Leipzig.
DOK Leipzig is also pleased to cooperate with numerous partners in the area of content.
The media partners of DOK Leipzig 2020 are Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Cineuropa and, for the first time, Screen International.
An overview of the awards, award sponsors and juries of DOK Leipzig can be found here: Awards & Jurys
International competitions and Camera Lucida section with world premieres by Ada Ushpiz, Shelly Silver, Boris Gerrets and Thunska Pansittivorakul | Live film talks on all full-length films in the International Competition
The films in the International Competitions have been finalised. The same goes for the new Camera Lucida section with unconventional films that are not in competition. This completes the programme of DOK Leipzig.
This year the festival will show a total of 150 films and XR works, including 43 world premieres, 11 international, 7 European and 36 German premieres.
A number of renowned filmmakers have entries in the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, such as American artist Shelly Silver with the world premiere of her new work, “Girls/Museum”. Filmed at Leipzig’s fine arts museum, the Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK), young girls aged seven to nineteen engage with works of art, most of which were produced by men. DOK Leipzig is also celebrating the world premiere of “Children” by Israeli director Ada Ushpiz. Her film asks why Palestinian minors participate in the Intifada against Israel. Ushpiz follows children and their families and witnesses tremendous pressure. Congolese director Dieudo Hamadi is represented with “Downstream to Kinshasa”. His film starts off in Kisangani and tells the story of people disabled by war who are struggling to receive compensation. Young directors are participating in the competitions with productions from Argentina, Russia and Lithuania.
The United States is one thematic focus of the films, which use various approaches to provide cinematic commentary on the state of the country. The subject of abortion is also dealt with in a controversial and expressive way in the Argentinian film “Vicenta”, which has its world premiere at DOK Leipzig.
“The international competitions of DOK Leipzig focus on the fruitful encounter between young people who are eager to experiment and those who have remained true to the curiosity and creativity they started out with,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. “For the first time, therefore, the international jury in the competition for long films will award not only a Golden Dove, but also a Silver Dove, which is explicitly intended for the best film by an up-and-coming director.”
In the International Competition Short Film, the film “E14” offers an idiosyncratic examination of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. “William Jefferson Wilderness” is another US film, one that deals with the legacy of former President Bill Clinton in an original way.
The newly established Camera Lucida section will present five unconventional films not in competition. The multiple award-winning Dutch director Boris Gerrets, who passed away in spring 2020, created the work “Lamentations of Judas”, which will have its world premiere at DOK Leipzig. For this cinematic essay, he travelled to South Africa, to an abandoned asbestos mining town on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. In his latest film, “Avalon”, Thunska Pansittivorakul, whose films have been shown at the Berlinale, in Rotterdam and elsewhere, assembles explicitly sexual film footage of himself and his lover, who is twenty years his junior, into a narrative about desire and passion.
“Our new Camera Lucida programme brings together captivating documentaries that challenge the conventions of cinema and confront reality in a particularly lucid way,” explains Christoph Terhechte.
The films in the International Competition Long Film will have their premiere in a live stream in addition to cinema screenings. Live film talks will also be held in cinemas and online. From the day after the premiere, the films will be available online for 14 days.
The other films in the DOK Leipzig programme will also be accompanied by talks and introductions, which will be available online. These include pre-recorded film talks as well as introductions by members of the festival’s selection committee and the “Director’s Short Cuts”, short cinematic messages from the directors, which they were free to structure. “In this way, we strive to allow filmmakers to participate in the festival even if they cannot come to Leipzig this year, and to convey as much of the festival atmosphere as possible to our audience online as well,” says Terhechte.
A total of 150 films and XR works will be shown to the public in nine different venues in Leipzig. DOK Leipzig will again offer free admission to some of the films in the East Wing (Osthalle) of Leipzig’s main railway station. Furthermore, almost all of the films in this year’s programme will be available online throughout Germany for two weeks.
The Golden Dove in the Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film in combination with €10,000 is sponsored by MDR. The Silver Dove in the Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film in combination with €6,000 will for the first time be sponsored by 3sat.
You’ll find a list of all the films in the international competitions and the Camera Lucida programme in the pdf.
You can find the complete programme with further details on all films and their screening dates at the festival here.
Images of DOK Leipzig, logos and further press material, including important figures and dates, can be found in our press download area.
The 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig will be held as a hybrid festival this year. In addition to cinema screenings for the Leipzig audience, a large part of the programme will be shown online throughout Germany. Film talks, podcasts and the industry events of DOK Industry will be available online. Accredited guests are able to view festival films online worldwide.
Would you like to be accredited for DOK Leipzig 2020? Please, register with a new account on myDOK by 18 October and use this form to apply for your online accreditation.
A new podcast series in collaboration with What's Up with Docs, the Programmers of Color Collective and Themba Bhebhe
The 2020 DOK Industry Programme focuses on the participation of under-represented filmmakers, opening doors and breaking down power structures that permeate the documentary film industry. The virtual offerings of Germany's leading platform for the sector are intended to advance sustainable models of filmmaking during destabilising times and break new ground in inclusive film production.
With regard to the organisation and curation of this year’s online edition, Head of DOK Industry Brigid O’Shea says: “My main concern was not to pick up DOK Industry Programme and put it in a Zoom call. Instead, we as a team salvaged as much recognisable, efficient and useful programming as we could, and then got comfortable with letting go of the rest. Then we turned our attention to what we want to change, and that is to begin the process of highlighting overlooked or underrepresented voices in the documentary community and how to open up new discussion and debate, while still offering the best access to the international creative documentary marketplace.”
For the online edition of the Industry Programme, O'Shea and her team are producing a new series of podcasts to amplify industry-relevant perspectives beyond the screen. Created in collaboration with What's Up with Docs, the Programmers of Color Collective and Themba Bhebhe (Film Industry Curator, UK and France), the series addresses issues such as the decolonisation of the film industry, discrimination against and resistance by indigenous filmmakers and filmmakers of colour, and story ownership.
When it comes to running the Industry Programme amid the current pandemic, O’Shea says: “Our festival to us represents joy and celebration, and finding ways to translate this into the digital space has been challenging. But we cannot ignore the reality around us. It is time to get serious about reshaping our industry to ensure its future.”
One stimulating discussion about this future will be the XR conference at DOK Exchange, with two of the keynote speeches delving deeper into the works that can be experienced at DOK Neuland. One will address the 360° film "Gimme One", in which ballroom dancers describe a reality where white-dominated, heteronormative patterns have no place. Producer Harry Silverlock will discuss the film’s theme of working with communities as allies with the protagonist Diva. Another speaker will be Anna Mauersberger, one of the makers of the VR installation "The Shape of Us", which can be experienced as a multiplayer work at DOK Neuland. She will discuss the possibility of using VR to reconnect people and nature. The event will be moderated by scientist and artist Rob Eagle.
This year, an award will once again be presented as part of the rough cut presentation DOK Preview Germany. Eight German film projects seeking international distribution partners have been invited to this event. Donated by the company D-Facto Motion, the DFM-Works-In-Progress Award includes a post-production grant worth 10,000 euros. The event will be moderated by managing director of German films Simone Baumann and producer Tanja Gregorieva-Waldhauer. Eight other projects will be invited to the rough cut presentation DOK Preview Training, held in cooperation with ten European training initiatives. Producer Heidi Fleisher and Pierre-Alexis Chevit from Cannes Docs will lead the event.
Another opportunity is DOK Short n’ Sweet, which revolves entirely around short films. Once again this year, filmmakers can pitch their documentary short film project to renowned editors and financiers here.
DOK Partner Presentations is also a chance to discover the latest documentaries looking for international partners and acquisition. These presentations will provide moderated feedback and are hosted by Chiledoc, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Doc Nomads, the Institute of Documentary Film (IDF), the International Emerging Filmmakers Talent Agency (IEFTA) and Polish Docs.
Additionally, there will be various virtual networking formats to suit accredited participants who want to exchange information with experts from different trades or those who simply want to meet other festival goers informally. Some of the virtual meetings will even take place with music thanks to the festival’s partners Polish Docs and ARTE.
All events, film presentations and podcasts will be accessible via the festival platform myDOK. There, accredited participants will also have the opportunity to network with other filmmakers via the DOK Industry Guide.
The guest list, which continues to expand, provides a first insight into the accredited trade visitors and can be viewed on the festival website: DOK Leipzig guest list.
An overview on this year’s DOK Industry Programme can be found here.
DOK Preview Germany projects can be found here, and DOK Preview Training projects are here.
As always, the DOK Co-Pro Market will take place on the first two days of the festival, this time virtually as well. The participating projects have already been announced.
DOK Industry Programme is co-funded and supported by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union.
For the first time at DOK Leipzig, a Golden Dove in combination with €3,000 and a Silver Dove in combination with €1,500 will be awarded in the newly established competitions for the Audience Award for long and short films. Twenty documentaries and animated films from 12 countries will be screened in “The Golden Section” competitions, in cinemas and online. These include five world premieres, five international premieres, one European premiere and nine German premieres.
“We are happy that a panel of cinema enthusiasts representing the DOK Leipzig audience will be voting on films in competition this year,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. “The title of the competitions, ‘The Golden Section’, evokes harmonious proportions and thus a well-rounded, multifaceted film programme. Here you’ll find films that stir emotions, that take a subjective look at global issues as well as at one’s personal surroundings, and that can be surprising, warm and humorous.”
Waiting to be discovered are films by established filmmakers, such as Todd Chandler from the United States and Nicola Graef, who has been a guest at DOK Leipzig on several occasions. The selection also includes films by numerous up-and-coming directors, such as Rocco Di Mento and Areum Parkkang from South Korea. Representing central Germany are animated filmmaker Falk Schuster, director Alina Cyranek and 3-D artist Franz Impler. Luca Lucchesi is included with a film produced by Wim Wenders.
The competition entries include cinematic narratives about loneliness in the big city of Berlin as well as reflections on fake news and gun violence in US schools. One of the films selected deals explicitly with the time of the lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic. Other works follow a musical couple and their passion for Balkan music, take a close look at Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece “Las Meninas” and reveal the humorous side to animated film. There is also a portrait of a fervent football coach who is prone to excess. An autobiographical work is dedicated to the tragic and comic sides of the life of a filmmaker and young mother caught between travelling to festivals, feeling homesick and changing nappies.
The Golden Dove for a Long Documentary or Animated Film and the Silver Dove for a Short Documentary or Animated Film in the “Golden Section” competitions will be awarded by seven film enthusiasts from around Leipzig who have applied to DOK Leipzig to be on the panel: Johanna Bender, Maurane Cugny, Hermann Klinghammer, Ahmad Masoud, Rico Mosig, Sabine Seliger and Anita Weiss. This year's award-winning films will be announced on the Sunday of the festival (1 November 2020).
The Silver Dove in the “Golden Section” competition for the Audience Award for Short Documentary and Animated Film in combination with €1,500 in prize money is donated by the Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e. V., the Friends of DOK Leipzig.
Please find an overview of all films in the Audience Award competitions in the pdf file.
Resonating Spaces is the title of the 6th Extended Reality (XR) Exhibition that can be experienced as part of DOK Leipzig from 27 to 31 October. DOK Neuland is setting up nine works as a place of experience in the Museum of Fine Arts (MdbK). For the first time, individual works will also be presented at three additional locations — in the Grassimuseum für Völkerkunde, in the INTERIM of the Cinémathèque and in the foyer of the Schaubühne Lindenfels.
Festival director Christoph Terhechte says: “We are delighted that DOK Neuland will not only be shown at the MdbK, but will also be brought to the individual districts of Leipzig. We want to continue along this path so that a wider audience can experience these formats.”
Nine works in total will be exhibited, including seven VR experiences, a 360° film and a sound installation. One of the XR works is a multiplayer experience controlled by the visitors’ own hands via a camera built into the headset.
Lars Rummel, the curator of DOK Neuland, uses Resonating Spaces to reference sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance. This theory pursues the idea that the accelerating pace of life since the 18th century and the expansion of global reach via the digital realm have led to an alienated experience of the world in which the need for resonant, mutually effective relationships is not satisfied.
DOK Neuland takes up this idea and offers commentary on it: XR creates resonant spaces in a digital format. Lars Rummel says: “We are hijacking Rosa’s theory and formulating an assumption: XR media with their digital narrative strategies can also be resonating spaces. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, we only seemed to scroll endlessly, to empathize emotionally but without activation. However, access to information does not absolve us of social responsibility; rather, it starts there. With the current selection of works, we are providing experiential spaces that activate us emotionally and reveal a different underlying attitude. Let us together find alternatives to acceleration.”
The works selected this year deal with the relationship between open and closed systems, with access to and exclusion from society. They confront the audience with safe spaces, (digital) networks and reconnecting with nature, and allow glimpses into microcosms. They create experiential spaces other than clicking through. After all, as Lars Rummel says: “The world is interconnected, even digitally, but not everyone has the same kind of access. This exhibition will not change that, but it could be a starting point for our visitors.”
The nine works are arranged in three rooms with different themes.
In the first of these, which can be summed up under the dualistic heading “We and Society”, three works are represented. Five protagonists come together in the 360° film “Gimme One”, which deals with the international subculture of the ballroom dancing scene and sheds light on ideas of cultural appropriation and the necessity of safe spaces. The VR work “To Miss the Ending” is about an attempt to upload one’s own consciousness into a kind of cloud. Other protagonists are waiting there to share their memories and stories. The attempt fails; digital refuge leads to an increasing blurring of one’s own memories, which fade and merge with the system. “The Smallest of Worlds – A Social Landscape of Collected Privacy” is designed as a virtual archive that combines scans made by users. The place that was helpful in overcoming isolation can be scanned via mobile phone and thus become part of the archive. Anyone interested is invited via social media to upload pictures to thesmallestofworlds.com and thus become part of the work.
The adjacent room is used to group together works having the theme of “(Re)connecting with Nature”. The work “Ilios” by Marcel Karnapke and Mika Johnson deals with our relationship to each other, to the world, to the environment and to constant change in the midst of the current pandemic. “Hypha” was created in collaboration with a mushroom activist from Chile. The audience uses a controller to follow the development of a fungus from a spore to the complete mushroom, making clear its essential, yet unseen role in the development and shaping of our ecosystem. “The Shape of Us" uses the new Oculus Quest VR headset. The theme is the destructive influence that humans have on the environment. As a shared ritual, three people come together in parallel in this experience.
A third grouping is made under the heading “Perspective and Journey”. This is an epistemological process, the exploration of which leads to a kind of purification. This becomes tangible, for example, in the work “Locus Solus”, in which a researcher creates inventions in the absence of any moral precepts. He believes that death can be overcome by cloning the brain. “Gravity VR” simulates a supposed weightlessness. Without walls or floors, all objects fall into an immeasurable space. Finally, DOK Neuland also presents a sound installation, a work called “Der Dröhner”, which consists of a wooden crate that each person enters individually. The artist Karl Russell is on site to control the improvised sound collages, which he adapts to the mood of each individual — a kind of analogue VR work, since the story is created entirely in the mind in this whole-body experience.
Instead of being a closed cinema auditorium, DOK Neuland is an open experiential space. In collaboration with the artist Paula Gehrmann, a scenography has been created that suggests footpaths and thought paths for visiting the exhibition and that offers an aid to finding one’s physical location.
The nine works can be seen from 27 to 31 October with free admission and suitable hygiene precautions. Reservations are required. Tickets are available on site. Starting today, early-bird tickets can be booked online via Eventbrite. (dokneulandearlybird.eventbrite.com)
The exhibition in the MdbK and the Grassimuseum für Völkerkunde is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the Cinémathèque INTERIM and the Schaubühne Lindenfels, it can be experienced daily from 3 to 8 p.m.
DOK Neuland has been supported by ARTE since its first edition. The European culture channel is committed to using new digital technologies for innovative storytelling. DOK Neuland has partnered with Grover, a Berlin-based technology rental company that has been offering digital artists, filmmakers and designers flexible access to technical equipment since 2017. DOK Neuland is supported by MDR Media. DOK Neuland is part of the DOK young talent programme and is carried out in cooperation with SLM, the Saxon State Authority for Commercial Broadcasting and New Media. As in previous years, the premises are being made available by MdbK. The Grassimuseum für Völkerkunde, the Cinémathèque Leipzig e.V. and the Schaubühne Lindenfels are also providing exhibition spaces. DOK Leipzig also thanks the US Consulate in Leipzig for its support and Sennheiser for the headphones.
An overview of all works in the exhibition can be found here: www.dok-leipzig.de/dok-neuland
Cinematic panoramas of the state of the world, defiant protagonists, visually engaging works and philosophical views of humanity and the environment: the films of the German competitions at DOK Leipzig have been finalised.
“For the programme of the German Competitions, we’ve been able to draw from a variety of themes and perspectives on the world. Most of all, the range of cinematic styles is highly gratifying; it demonstrates the artistic possibilities of today’s documentary filmmaking. Young talent eager to experiment encounters established artists in the competitions,” festival director Christoph Terhechte says about the selection. “It doesn’t stop at a close look at Germany. A far-sighted cross-border vision of the world testifies to an intense curiosity about international locations and local stories outside of Germany. Some of the films are profoundly exploratory, some are panoramas of vast landscapes, some are strong portraits and explorations of family ties, and a few are simply hilarious.”
The selection committee has chosen a total of 17 productions for the German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film and the German Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film. Among them are twelve world premieres, one European and four German premieres. In both competitions, the gender ratio of the directors is balanced. The other competitions of the festival, to be announced in the coming weeks, are also gender-balanced in terms of directors.
Some of the films deal with pressing issues of our time, such as the approaching end of nuclear power generation in Germany and the question of permanent storage, the urbanisation of African societies using the example of Addis Ababa, and the perilous flight across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe of people seeking refuge. The latter topic is of current political relevance, as the Sea-Watch reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird, from which the film “Operation Moonbird” was filmed above the Mediterranean Sea, was grounded by the Italian government this month. This is hindering the continuation of the reconnaissance and rescue mission.
Other works encourage reflection on identity, prejudice and discrimination. For example, problematic aspects of the German fascination with North America’s indigenous population, the so-called “Indians”, and the cultural appropriation associated with this are discussed. A satirical look at the art business calls existing gender roles into question. Stories of emancipation and empowerment emerge for young Egyptian women who lift weights and a Syrian Orthodox nun who asserts her identity in a Muslim environment.
Some of the directors participating this year have previously had films screened at DOK Leipzig. Andreas Voigt, for example, returns to Leipzig with a film about people in the border area between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. In 2015 he opened the festival with his long-term observation “Alles andere zeigt die Zeit”. Carsten Rau was last represented in Leipzig in 2014 with his very popular film “Willkommen auf Deutsch”. Martina Priessner attended the festival’s industry platform, DOK Industry, last year with her current production: her film was one of the rough cuts presented at DOK Preview Germany. And animated filmmaker Anne Isensee received the Golden Dove in Leipzig 2017 for her film "Megatrick".
This year’s award-winning films will be presented on the Sunday of the festival (1 November 2020). The films in the German Competition Long Film are nominated for a Golden Dove, the films in the German Competition Short Film for a Silver Dove. Members of the jury are film editor and filmmaker Bettina Böhler, actress Anne Ratte-Polle and Alex Moussa Sawadogo, artistic director of the Afrikamera festival.
Some of the films are also nominated for partner awards: the DEFA Sponsoring Prize, the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, the Ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, the MDR Film Prize, the Gedanken-Aufschluss Prize, the Young Eyes Film Award and the Mephisto 97.6 Audience Award.
A list of all the films nominated in the German Competitions can be found in the pdf file.
The juries of the 63rd edition of the festival include such filmmakers and artists as Bettina Böhler, Anne Ratte-Polle, Volker Koepp and Alfredo Jaar.
Bettina Böhler, along with Anne Ratte-Polle and Alex Moussa Sawadogo, will determine the winners of the Golden and Silver Doves in the German Competitions at DOK Leipzig. As an editor, Böhler works with such renowned directors as Christian Petzold, Margarethe von Trotta, Angela Schanelec and Valeska Grisebach. She has also realised projects with Christoph Schlingensief. Her documentary film about the director, “Schlingensief: A Voice That Shook the Silence” (“Schlingensief - In das Schweigen hineinschreien”), was released in 2020. Anne Ratte-Polle is one of Germany’s best-known actresses. In 2019, she had the leading role in İlker Çatak’s relationship drama “I Was, I Am, I Will Be” (“Es gilt das gesprochene Wort”) and was nominated for a German Film Award in the category “Best Actress”. Alex Moussa Sawadogo is the artistic director of the Afrikamera film festival in Berlin as well as the founder of the Ouaga Film Lab in Burkina Faso. As an expert on contemporary African film, he has been involved with various film festivals, including those in Cannes and Locarno.
The documentary film director Volker Koepp is also among the jurors of DOK Leipzig 2020. He and four other jury members will select the winners of the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film. For decades, Koepp has dedicated his films to eastern Germany and eastern Europe and the people living there. The winners of the Golden and Silver Dove will also be chosen by the well-known film scholar and critic B. Ruby Rich, whose focus is on independent cinema, Latin American films, documentaries, queer cinema and feminist films, and by the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, whose installations combine photography, architecture and theatre and are exhibited worldwide. The jury will also include the renowned Cameroonian-born cultural producer Koyo Kouoh, who has been a curator of numerous international exhibitions including the documenta, and the Brazilian filmmaker and visual artist Fernanda Pessoa, whose film “Arid Zone” received an honourable mention in DOK Leipzig’s Next Masters Competition in 2019.
The short animated and documentary films in the International Competition will be judged by a jury that will include the Moroccan director Randa Maroufi. Her documentary film “Ceuta’s Gate” was shown in this same competition at DOK Leipzig in 2019. Annegret Richter will also be voting to determine the competition’s winning films. Currently the managing director of AG animated film, she was previously the programme manager in charge of animated films at DOK Leipzig. This is also not the first time that filmmaker Kelvin Kyung Kun Park will be taking part in the Leipzig festival. In 2019 he presented his film “Army” in the Next Masters Competition.
The jury for “The Golden Section” audience awards will consist of film fans who have applied to DOK Leipzig to be on the jury. Deciding the winners in the categories of feature-length documentary or animated film and short documentary or animated film will be Johanna Bender, Maurane Cugny, Hermann Klinghammer, Ahmad Masoud, Rico Mosig, Sabine Seliger and Anita Weiß.
With the exception of the jury for the new “Golden Section” competitions, all jury members will view the films online and discuss what they’ve seen with their colleagues in virtual spaces. A total of ten juries will select the award-winning films at this year’s festival.
The awards of the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig will be presented in two different events this year. The partner awards will be presented on the afternoon of the festival Sunday (1 November), while the award ceremony of the Golden and Silver Doves will be held that same evening. Both events will be streamed on the Internet and will be accessible to accredited persons and the public.
DOK Leipzig 2020 will be held from 26 October to 1 November in cinemas as well as online. Around 140 films will be screened this year.
For the 16th time, film projects that are still in the development phase are being given the opportunity to find co-production and financing partners at the DOK Co-Pro Market. Filmmakers submitted more than 300 projects this year, of which 36 projects from 33 countries were ultimately selected.
“2020 — what a complicated year in so many ways! We are so proud of the 36 projects selected for the DOK Co-Pro Market and grateful that despite the many challenges, filmmakers and producers are still pushing to create new works that challenge not only the world around us, but also storytelling and the genre more generally,” says DOK Industry head Brigid O’Shea. “Inequality, a lack of diversity and a lack of storytelling sovereignty have snapped into razor-sharp focus during this time of crisis, and we won’t be ignoring this in our programming.”
Many of the selected projects question the status quo in society. Climate change and its effects, protest and revolution as well as stories from underrepresented communities have just as much of a place here as family stories. The motifs include timeless content such as love and sexuality, trauma and violence, the ways in which artists’ lives are shaped and how they find their identity, and sport and dance.
This year, the DOK Industry Team was assisted in the selection of projects by industry programmer Selin Murat, who is the director of that part of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) and Alex Tondowski, whose production company Tondowski Films (Germany) has already won several awards.
The DOK Co-Pro Market will again be held on the first two days of the festival. Over 250 industry representatives will meet potential partners on 26 and 27 October. This year, the 900 individual meetings will be moved online and organised across all time zones. In order to prepare the participants for the new situation in the best possible way, there will be a workshop on online pitching prior to the DOK Co-Pro Market.
In addition to the individual meetings, the DOK Industry team will offer an accompanying online programme that will open up space for discussion and debate and include events on the topics of distribution, co-production and co-financing.
“The digital edition of the DOK Co-Pro Market gives the event the opportunity to try new things, including greatly increasing the number of producers without projects who can participate in the Open Programme and in the meetings with projects,” says O’Shea. “The goal of this is to create a new, strong and diverse network of producers collaborating internationally and to create new kinds of support networks through the crisis. To link documentary professionals around the world despite the restrictions has been one of the main challenges to overcome. We also are very excited to still welcome producers without projects and producer delegations, in particular from Chile, Poland and our partner IEFTA.” It is still possible to apply as a producer without a project at DOK Leipzig by 25 September.
As last year, four awards will be presented in the context of the DOK Co-Pro Market.
For the second time, a prize from the Saxon State Minister for the Arts is awarded to an outstanding documentary film project by a woman director. The 5,000 euro prize has been donated by the Saxon Ministry of Science and Art and will be presented at the festival opening on 26 October.
The Zonta Club Leipzig Elster, which promotes women in professional life, will as usual award the Zonta Club Leipzig Elster Female Talent Development Prize, a scholarship of 1,000 euros.
The European Women's Audiovisual Network (EWA) is also continuing its partnership with DOK Leipzig. Together with EWA, the festival will award a development prize of 1,000 euros to a documentary filmmaker who participates in the Circle Women Doc Accelerator training programme. In addition to the prize money, the filmmaker will receive guidance in the further development of her film.
Once again, the Current Time TV and DOK Co-Pro Development Prize will be awarded to a documentary film project from eastern or central Europe. It is endowed with 2,000 US dollars and is awarded by DOK Leipzig and the Russian-language channel Current Time TV.
“We are looking forward to greeting everyone online and promise you an efficient, relevant and effective experience,” says Brigid O’Shea in closing.
A total of six curated Special Programmes will be presented at DOK Leipzig this year. The programmes offer insight into the history of the festival and film in general, focus on the work of outstanding directors and explore the intersection of media art and animation. This year, in the spirit of the hybrid festival, the programmes will be shown to the public in cinemas and will be accessible online throughout Germany.
This year’s homage is dedicated to director, photographer and cinematographer Annik Leroy. Her meditative works situated between film, video art and installation invite us to reflect on European history and the human condition. In her latest film, “Tremor: Es ist immer Krieg”, she combines the ghostly voices of Ingeborg Bachmann, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Anna Freud with images of ruins. “Cell 719”, on the other hand, is a video project about Ulrike Meinhof and the psychology of terror. “Annik Leroy’s works are pervaded by the scars of history and yet are driven by a utopian energy,” says Ralph Eue, who curated the series. “Passionately, she explores how tradition and politics, psychology and environment shape people’s identity.” The homage comprises four films by the artist and can be seen both online and in Leipzig cinemas.
During the week of the festival, there will also be a master class in which Leroy will share her personal view of her work with the audience. This will be held online.
The “Animation Perspectives” programme is also structured as a dialogue. In a virtual setting, media artists Patrick Buhr and Aaron Jablonski will exchange ideas with the online festival audience about their animation miniatures and offer an exclusive peek at their working directories. Patrick Buhr’s works are fragmentary narratives, associative, playful and peppered with ironic humour. He combines hand drawing with 3-D animation. Aaron Jablonski, on the other hand, works closer to photographic reality, which makes his artistic interventions using augmented reality and digital errors all the more striking. As @exitsimulation he creates face filters for Instagram. Users slip into another identity with the help of animated masks that are at times bizarre.
“What impresses us about their work is the fascinating state of equilibrium between sketchy and complex design,” says curator André Eckardt. “Although Buhr and Jablonski follow very different paths in aesthetic terms, they share a creative openness to technical experiments.”
The “Re-Visions” programme looks back at the history of animated film at DOK Leipzig. Animated film has been part of the festival from the very beginning, and in 1995 it was given an important platform in the form of an independent competition. “Re-Visions” celebrates this anniversary with 25 films representing the most diverse animation techniques and narrative forms from the past 25 years of the festival. One programme is dedicated to the first year alone. Political satirical drawings can be seen here as well as the poetic side of this cinematic form — the puppet animation “100 Years of Cinema” is a declaration of love for the history of cinema. The Leipzig festival’s close ties to eastern Europe create a strong affinity to that major home of international animated film. Proof of this is the Polish entry “The Gentle Giant” by Marcin Podolec about a young poetry slammer. This entry stands for countless films at DOK Leipzig that conjoin the worlds of animation and documentary film. “Re-Visions” can be viewed on the cinema screen and online.
DOK Leipzig offers the complete range of animation and documentaries to even the youngest film fans. In the “Kids DOK” programmes, the festival presents documentary and animated films for audiences as young as age 5, 8, 10 and 14 — in cinemas as well as online. The protagonists of the documentary films are all children and adolescents who invite the audience to enter their worlds.
This year, Leipzig’s main railway station will not only be the venue for current productions, but will also show films on the theme of industrial heritage. Together with the Saxon State Archives, DOK Leipzig will present a programme about stations and railways that will take the audience back to the 1960s to 1980s with a bit of humorous nostalgia. Included is a film clip about the Mitropa company as well as films about Leipzig’s station forecourt and the Leipzig suburban railway. Amateur feature films, music and advertising films on the subject can also be discovered here.
The Leipzig region is also topic of another Special Programme. Together with the DEFA Foundation, the festival is screening Kurt Tetzlaff’s documentary film “Memories of a Landscape — to Manuela”, which was restored in 2018. In this 1983 film, the director followed the lives of a number of people south of Leipzig for several years, whose villages had to make way for lignite mining and were thus forced to say farewell and make a new start. Tetzlaff’s films received several awards in Leipzig and at other international festivals.
Tetzlaff’s film gives a taste of a more extensive programme with works by the director which was planned for 2020 but has had to be postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The film programme on the subject of industrial heritage is funded by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony. This measure is co-financed by tax revenues on the basis of the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament.
DOK Leipzig would also like to thank the Saxon State Archive, the DEFA Foundation and the Promenaden Hauptbahnhof for their sponsorship and support of the Special Programmes.
This year, DOK Leipzig will present a reduced selection of about 120 films. All of them are to be screened in selected Leipzig venues, in compliance with hygiene regulations. Most of the films will also be available online throughout Germany. Furthermore, audiences in Leipzig will be able to attend the DOK Neuland interactive exhibition. These and other decisions have been made by Festival Director Christoph Terhechte and his team in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects.
In view of the uncertain situation, the festival will not be inviting any guests this year. However, the audience will be able to participate in the established film talks, in cinemas as well as online from their own homes. A variety of new online formats will facilitate communication between filmmakers and the audience. The competitions announced for the festival will remain in place, with only the introduction of a competition for long animated films being postponed until 2021. Some special programmes will be held in Leipzig cinemas as well as on the Internet in 2020.
“Our aim is to present an artistically multifaceted hybrid festival that continues to thrive on audience participation, that is based on the idea of solidarity and that preserves the character of a film festival. We as a team have been giving a lot of thought to these aspects in recent weeks, and we will continue to do so,” Christoph Terhechte explains.
All of the films, whether in the cinemas or online, will celebrate their festival premiere at a set time and then be available on demand for a maximum of two weeks. “Retaining the character of a festival is important to us. We regard the streaming option as an extension of the cinema screenings. We wish to support filmmakers as effectively as possible,” the festival director says. Only in Germany will the films selected be accessible via the Internet, and there will be a limit on the number of tickets available per film. A charge will still be made for tickets offered online.
“The fact that filmmakers won’t be able to celebrate their premieres in person with audiences in Leipzig in 2020 is extremely painful,” Christoph Terhechte continues. “It’s all the more reason for us to establish a productive dialogue between filmmakers, the audience and our programme team.” Thus there will be a mixture of pre-recorded and live film talks. Additionally, there are plans to interlink online and offline offerings.
This year, the audience will also be asked to judge films. The prizes in the newly introduced Golden Section competition for long and short documentary and animated films will be awarded by a jury comprised of Leipzig audience members who will watch the films in a cinema on the big screen. The online audience will also be able to vote in all competition programmes. This year, however, the professional juries will judge the festival’s competitions from a distance.
Submissions are still being accepted for the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig. Directors and artists may submit their films and interactive works to the festival by 7 July.
As previously announced, all of the industry offerings of DOK Industry 2020 will be held online. Documentary film projects may still be submitted for this year’s DOK Co-Pro Market by 1 August.
DOK Leipzig’s Industry Programme will be held online this year. Film professionals will have access to all of the key events of DOK Industry in late October. The DOK Co-Pro Market will be held in virtual form, as will the presentations of DOK Preview, the DOK Short n’ Sweet short film pitch, the DOK Interactive Conference, networking events and talks.
This decision is a clear reaction to the pandemic and associated travel restrictions and hygiene measures. Simultaneously these new circumstances provide impetus to rethink how Germany's main industry platform for documentary film is organised and creates room for innovation on a sustainable basis, explains Head of DOK Industry Brigid O’Shea: “Our work as we know it, and by extension, the work of the whole audiovisual sector, will never be the same again. We are acutely aware of the challenges facing film professionals in these times. Nonetheless, we look forward to writing a new chapter in the future of film markets: greener, more efficient, more inclusive. We still have many challenges to overcome to fulfil this vision. We will be releasing more and more information as the festival approaches about how accredited guests can join us for this digital edition.”
The focus will be on finding creative ways of implementing industry mechanisms for financing, distribution and networking within the documentary and animated film industry, and on bringing the atmosphere of DOK Industry events to the Web: “We will work hard to maintain that which makes DOK Industry unique and a leading market for creative documentaries: relaxed and cosy, small-scale, targeted and time-efficient. Our focus will continue to be on the highest-quality projects and decision-makers.”
Dialogue and collaboration within the film industry is particularly important in these uncertain times. In the coming weeks, the festival will begin offering a series of online seminars that will give filmmakers the opportunity to get to know the team at DOK Leipzig and inform themselves about submitting films and projects to DOK Leipzig.
The Call for Projects for the 16th DOK Co-Pro Market is already underway. Filmmakers looking for co-production and financing partners for their documentary film projects may continue to make submissions until 1 August 2020. “This edition will have a particular focus on the future: to analyse co-production models and the international distribution chain in particular and to place professionals at the heart of our endeavours,” says Brigid O’Shea.
Festival director Christoph Terhechte adds: “DOK Leipzig will be putting forward a versatile and innovative hybrid version of its programme in 2020, which will combine online activities and presentations on location in cinemas in Leipzig. In 2021, we plan to welcome filmmakers back to Leipzig in person. In the coming weeks, we will also be announcing corresponding new features of the film programme.”
For the first time, DOK Leipzig will have its own competition for feature-length animated films. A three-member jury will decide during the festival who will be awarded the Golden Dove. “In recent years, there have been excellent, artistic animated films that are suited to DOK Leipzig and that have the potential to find an enthusiastic audience here,” explains Christoph Terhechte, who assumed the position of managing and artistic director of DOK Leipzig in January 2020. In order to establish the festival as a platform for feature-length animated films, the programme team will be scouting out and inviting to Leipzig more and more feature-length animations in addition to short animated films.
The prestigious International Competition Long Film will, in the meantime, be expanded. The jury will also be enlarged from 3 to 5 persons. In addition to the Golden Dove, the jury members will award a Silver Dove for a feature-length documentary by an up-and-coming director. As part of this move, the Next Masters Competitions that have been held until now will be combined with the international competitions for feature-length and short films. “Promoting young talent is one of DOK Leipzig’s main priorities. Up-and-coming filmmakers as well as established directors should each be given their place in our international competitions,” says Terhechte.
The elaborate International Programme and the Late Harvest section will in future be combined and provided with new audience awards for short and feature-length films. Moreover, the section will be streamlined significantly.
The changes to the programme have the goal of creating a clear programme structure and avoiding overlaps between sections. “DOK Leipzig has developed rapidly in recent years, yet has always remained a laid-back place for watching films, discussing them and expanding one’s professional networks,” Terhechte states. “Following the steady growth of the festival programme in recent years, we will not least be focusing on consolidating in 2020.”
In this vein, this year’s programme of films will include some 200 works — compared to the more than 300 that were shown during each of the previous editions of the festival. Attendance at individual showings is expected to remain the same due to more repeat showings of the festival films. The special programmes, such as retrospectives and homages, will remain integral components of the festival, and collaborations with regional and national initiatives such as the DEFA Foundation and the Saxon State Archives are to continue. DOK Neuland, the exhibition of interactive and immersive works, will also continue.
“We wish to maintain the festival’s high standards of quality, seek out new forms of cinema at all times and offer a bountiful programme to audiences at DOK Leipzig. At the same time, we are working on not overburdening our audiences with the abundance of offers, but rather on presenting clearly defined programmes from which audiences can select,” the new festival director expounds.
DOK Leipzig will be held from 26 October to 1 November this year. Since 3 March, documentary and animated films of any length as well as interactive works can be submitted to the 63rd edition of DOK Leipzig.
Here’s an overview of the six competitions at DOK Leipzig 2020:
- International Competition Long Documentary Film (long documentary films from 41 min)
The five-member international jury for this competition awards a Golden Dove for a long documentary, and a Silver Dove for a long documentary by an up-and-coming director (with up to three directorial works after completing their education).
- International Competition Long Animated Film (long animated films from 41 min)
The three-member international jury for this competition awards a Golden Dove for a long animated film.
- International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film (short documentary and animated films up to 40 min)
The three-member international jury for this competition awards one Golden Dove each for a short documentary and a short animated film.
- German Competition Long Documentary Film (long documentary films from 41 min)
- German Competition Short Documentary and Animation Film (Short documentary and animated films up to 40 min)
The three-member jury of these two competitions awards a Golden Dove for a German long documentary film and a Silver Dove for a German short documentary or animated film.
- Audience Competition Long and Short Documentary and Animated Film for the Leipzig Audience Award (documentary and animated films of all lengths)
The prizes for long and short documentaries or animated films will be determined by audience vote following public screenings during the festival.
The 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig ended with a bustling turnout. A total of 48,000 filmgoers and visitors came to the cinemas and festival events during the past week. Since Leena Pasanen became the festival director in 2015, annual attendance of the festival has hovered between 47,000 and 48,000.
“We’ve received extremely positive feedback from our filmmakers. Many of them were overwhelmed by the professionality and the relaxed atmosphere that the festival offered at the same time. Most of all, however, the filmmakers adored our audiences, whom they saw as particularly interested and focused,” says festival director Leena Pasanen.
The symposium held during DOK Leipzig for the first time was very well received. Some 900 people came to Leipzig’s Kupfersaal on two separate days to focus on the question “Who Owns the Truth?” Filmmakers such as Thomas Heise and Tamara Trampe as well as artists such as Helene Hegemann discussed with the audience the questions of how one can use the means of cinema to approach contentious individuals, whether there is a truth in narrative, and how power decides who is able to be heard in public. The symposium was subsidised by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, the German federal agency for civic education.
“With the symposium, we have created a space for productive discussion within an ongoing festival, and this is something we hope to be able to maintain in the coming years,” says Ralph Eue, who initiated the event.
A total of 24 prizes were awarded at the award ceremony on Saturday evening (2 November).
“The big winners of the evening were films that challenge the audience, that resonate for a long time and that adhere well to formal criteria,” says Pasanen. Three awards, the most to be received by a film that evening and including a Golden Dove, went to the film EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR by Lithuanian filmmakers Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius, who explored themes of guilt and atonement using the example of two criminal offenders serving life sentences. Two awards, also including a Golden Dove, went to the German entry STATUS AND TERRAIN by Ute Adamczewski, who documented places in Saxony that are no longer visibly recognizable as sites of persecution by the National Socialists in 1933.
More industry representatives than ever before attended the festival during the week of 28 October to 3 November to advance their film projects, expand their professional network and find ways of distributing their films worldwide. The industry section DOK Industry attracted some 2,000 film professionals from around the world.
“DOK Industry programme is rooted in the festival landscape as the place for creative documentaries from all over the world,” says DOK Industry’s director, Brigid O’Shea. “Our guests have in common many things, but the most important shared quality is their commitment to collaboration and curiosity. I want to thank all our partners and funders who make it possible to build such a wonderful collaborative event each year.”
A delegation from Croatia came to the festival. Eleven Croatian filmmakers were here, participating in panel discussions, networking and presenting films. This year’s country focus was on the post-Yugoslavian country and took place in collaboration with the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC).
“I’m very pleased that DOK Leipzig is attracting other organisers who, either at the festival or parallel to it, are carrying on discussions with experts, be they international platforms such as EAVE or national players such as AG DOK,” Pasanen adds.
For the first time, the interactive exhibition DOK Neuland was located in the Museum of Fine Arts. Some 2,800 attendees, including film fans as well as filmmakers from the region, discovered VR experiences and 360° films during the week of the festival. This year, as before, DOK Neuland received support from ARTE. On six evenings, DOK Leipzig attracted some 2,500 people to film screenings in the East Wing of Leipzig’s main railway station. This event was held in cooperation with the PROMENADEN Hauptbahnhof Leipzig and supported by IQ Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbH and the DOK Leipzig Circle of Friends (Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e.V.).
DOK Leipzig also attracted numerous young film fans. Not only the Kids DOK programmes drew crowds; as part of DOK Education, a school screening was held during the festival. Seven classes attended the screening of MYSELFIE by filmmaker Anne Scheschonk, which was sold out. For nearly an hour, the schoolchildren discussed the film, which follows a 12-year-old girl who loses all of her hair due to an illness. DOK Education is part of the DOK Nachwuchs programme and is realised in co-operation with the SLM.
The festival director concludes: “I’d like to thank all of our patrons, sponsors and partners for a successful DOK Leipzig 2019!”
This was the final festival under Leena Pasanen’s management. In 2020, Christoph Terhechte will succeed her as festival director. DOK Leipzig will be held from 26 October to 1 November next year.
The award-winners of DOK Leipzig have been finalized. A total of 24 awards were presented during the gala award ceremony at the Kupfersaal in Leipzig.
The film EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR has been awarded the Golden Dove International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film. In this work, Lithuanian filmmakers Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius explore guilt and atonement as experienced by two convicted felons serving life sentences. When his brother is murdered, Audrius Mickevičius wonders whether there is a statute of limitations for guilt and whether anyone can really ever atone for murder. Before the film was completed, Audrius Mickevičius fell ill and died. Nerijus Milerius finished the project. In its statement, the jury said: “It’s at the darkest of times when we’re confronted with the worst that we discover our true selves and that the human spirit shines the brightest. With grace and dignity, the filmmakers take us on a unique and unexpected journey of redemption.” This film is a co-production of Lithuania, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Italy. The Golden Dove was sponsored by German public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). Since 2018, the award-winning film in the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film automatically qualifies for the OSCAR® in the category of documentary feature provided it fulfils the Academy’s formal criteria. EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR also received the International Critics Prize of FIPRESCI and the Prize of the Interreligious Jury, and thus with a total three awards the most honours of the evening.
The Golden Dove German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film has gone to the entry STATUS AND TERRAIN by Ute Adamczewski. The director films places in Saxony that people no longer notice were sites of persecution by National Socialists in 1933. Documents from that era and memoirs written after the war by persons affected are read in a voice-over. Among various reasons for its decision, the jury said: “This work is not only a very important documentary; it also comes with an extremely powerful artistic form.” This award was sponsored by Weltkino film distributors.
With the Golden Dove Next Masters Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, recognition was bestowed upon SAFETY123, a film by Austrian filmmakers Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler. Shot in the Alps, this film explores a nearly invisible security system intended to protect people from natural disasters such as landslides, whose causes are not independent of human activity. The Golden Dove Next Masters Competition, sponsored by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, serves as start-up funding for the directors’ next film project. Honourable mention was given to the Brazilian production ARID ZONE by Fernanda Pessoa.
In the International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film, the Russian production PUBERTY by Elena Kondrateva has been awarded the Golden Dove for best documentary and the Iranian short film AM I A WOLF? by Amir Houshang Moein has been awarded the Golden Dove for best animated film. These winning films may also qualify directly for an OSCAR® (in the categories of short film and documentary short subject), provided they fulfil the Academy’s formal criteria. Honourable mention went to ASHO by Jafar Najafi, also an Iranian film.
The Golden Dove for Best Short Documentary and Animated Film has gone to the German-Ukrainian co-production OPERA GLASSES by Mila Zhluktenko. Honourable mention was given to THE LAST PAINTING by Tom Salt and GRAVEDAD by Matisse Gonzalez.
The Golden Dove Next Masters Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film has gone to the Ukrainian entry DEEP LOVE by Mykyta Lyskov. The two Golden Doves in the Next Masters Competitions, sponsored by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, serve as start-up funding for the director’s next film project.
The Healthy Workplaces Film Award, sponsored by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), has gone to the Swiss production BIRD ISLAND by Maya Kosa and Sergio Da Costa, about a care station for injured wild birds.
The MDR Film Prize for an outstanding eastern European documentary film in the Official Selection has gone to the Polish-Slovakian co-production THE WIND: A DOCUMENTARY THRILLER by Michał Bielawski, about a force of nature known as the Halny wind, which badly affects people in southern Poland and intensifies their anxieties.
The Film Prize Leipziger Ring honours a documentary film about human rights, democracy or civic involvement. This award is sponsored by the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution. This year, the award went to Natalia Preston’s film GIRLS OF PAADHAI, about a shelter in southern India for teenage girls who resist an early arranged marriage. The audience determined the award-winner.
This year at DOK Leipzig, a total of 24 awards with a combined value of 82,000 euros were presented, including seven Golden Doves. Tomorrow (Sunday), the audience favourites from the week-long festival, known as the DOK Busters, will be screened again. Altogether, 310 films and interactive works will have been shown at the week-long festival ending on Sunday.
You’ll find information about the award-winning films in the Filmfinder on our website: https://filmfinder.dok-leipzig.de/en/
All of the jury statements and awards, including honourable mentions, are included in the attachment.
Stills from all films can be found at: presse.dok-leipzig.de
All of the images may be used free of charge when reporting on DOK Leipzig. On publication, please use as a photo credit DOK Leipzig 2019/“Name of director” unless otherwise indicated in the image file.
Logos, impressions of the festival, and this year’s festival motif can be found here: https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en/dok/presse/download
All 24 Awards at a Glance:
The Golden Dove International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film has been given to the film EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR by Lithuanian filmmakers Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius. This 10,000-euro award is sponsored by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. The prize was presented by Dr. Katja Wildermuth, programme director of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.
The 10,000-euro Golden Dove German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, sponsored by Weltkino film distributors, has gone to the German production STATUS AND TERRAIN by Ute Adamczewski.
The Golden Dove Next Masters Competition, sponsored by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, has gone to the Austrian-Italian co-production SAFETY123 by Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler. The 10,000-euro prize money serves as start-up funding for the directors’ next project. The award was presented by Martin Fiedler, the Media Foundation’s spokesperson for media and public relations. The Next Masters Competition is one of DOK Leipzig’s offers to new talent; it is made possible in cooperation with the Saxon State Authority for Private Broadcasting and New Media.
In the International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film, the Golden Dove for Best Short Documentary has gone to the Russian production PUBERTY by Elena Kondrateva. The director is to receive 5,000 euros in prize money. The Golden Dove for Best Short Animated Film, also worth 5,000 euros, has been presented to the Iranian production AM I A WOLF? by Amir Houshang Moein. Honourable mention has gone to ASHO by Jafar Najafi, also an Iranian film.
The Golden Dove German Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film, which includes 5,000 euros in prize money, has been presented to the German-Ukrainian co-production OPERA GLASSES by Mila Zhluktenko. Honourable mention has gone to THE LAST PAINTING by Tom Salt and GRAVEDAD by Matisse Gonzalez.
The Golden Dove Next Masters Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film, which is sponsored by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig and includes 5,000 euros in prize money, has gone to the Ukrainian entry DEEP LOVE by Mykyta Lyskov. This award was presented by Martin Fiedler, the Media Foundation’s spokesperson for media and public relations.
The Healthy Workplaces Film Award, which is sponsored by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and includes 5,000 euros in prize money, has gone to the Swiss production BIRD ISLAND by Maya Kosa and Sergio Da Costa. This award also includes subtitling in several European languages. Bruno Thiébaud from EU-OSHA came onstage to present the award.
The 3,000-euro MDR Film Prize, awarded to an outstanding eastern European documentary film in the Official Selection, has gone to the Polish-Slovakian co-production THE WIND: A DOCUMENTARY THRILLER by Michał Bielawski. The award was presented by Dr. Ulrich Brochhagen, head of MDR’s editorial department for history, documentaries and eastern Europe.
The recipient of the Filmpreis Leipziger Ring, sponsored by the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution and valued at 2,500 euros, was determined by counting audience votes. This award has gone to the German entry GIRLS OF PAADHAI by director Natalia Preston. The award was presented by Rolf Sprink, member of the board of trustees of the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution.
The DEFA Sponsoring Prize for an outstanding long German documentary film in the German and International Competition, which includes 4,000 euros in prize money, has been given to Itay Marom for the Israeli-German production RESONANCE. The award was presented by Philip Zengel from the DEFA Foundation in Berlin.
The ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness has gone to Ute Adamczewski for her film STATUS AND TERRAIN. This 2,500-euro award is presented to a film in the German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film. Honourable mention was given to A QUIET RESISTANCE by Therese Koppe.
The Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize for the best long German documentary film (75 minutes or longer) in the Official Selection, along with the purchase of the licence, subtitling in as many as eight languages and 2,000 euros in prize money, has been presented to IN THE NAME OF SCHEHERAZADE OR THE FIRST BEERGARDEN IN TEHRAN by Narges Kalhor.
The Prize of the Interreligious Jury has gone to EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR by Lithuanian filmmakers Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius. This 2,500-euro award is sponsored jointly by the Interreligious Roundtable Leipzig and by VCH-Hotels Deutschland GmbH – im Verband Christlicher Hoteliers e.V., including Hotel MICHAELIS in Leipzig.
The FIPRESCI jury has awarded the International Critics Prize in the International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film to EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR by filmmaker Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius.
The Young Eyes Film Award, worth 2,000 euros and sponsored by Leipziger Stadtbau AG, has been presented to WHERE WE BELONG by Jacqueline Zünd. This prize is awarded by the Youth Jury in cooperation with Filmschule Leipzig e.V. to a film in the Official Selection. Peggy Valenta from Leipziger Stadtbau AG presented the award.
The DOK Neuland Award for an outstanding project in the exhibition of interactive works, valued at 1,000 euros and sponsored by DREFABRIK, has gone to the 360° film 4 FEET: BLIND DATE from Argentina by María Belén Poncio and Damián Turkieh. The DREFABRIK jury presented the award.
The mephisto 97.6 Audience Award for best animated film in the Official Selection was determined by counting audience votes. The award went to the German-Russian production TIES by Dina Velikovskaya. It was presented by Janick Nolting and Max Hemmann.
The Gedanken-Aufschluss Prize has gone to the Austrian film ROBOLOVE by director Maria Arlamovsky. The award is presented by a jury comprised of teenage and young-adult offenders at the Regis-Breitingen Juvenile Detention Centre to a film nominated to DOK im Knast. Art therapists Stefan Lohrke and Julia Nietzer were onstage at the award ceremony.
As part of the industry platform DOK Industry, five awards were presented during the festival week.
The 5,000-euro Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts was presented for the first time during the opening ceremony of DOK Leipzig by Dr. Eva-Maria Stange, Saxon State Minister for Science and Art. The honour went to the South African project BLACK WOMEN AND SEX by director Godisamang Khunou. Honourable mention was given to the South Korean project MY MISSING AUNT by director Juyeon Yang.
The Current Time TV Development Award honours an outstanding documentary film project from central or eastern Europe. This 2,000-US dollar award is presented by DOK Leipzig and Russian broadcaster Current Time TV. The award went to Giedrė Žickytė for the Lithuanian-German project IRENA.
The EWA Women’s Talent Development Award is presented to the best documentary film project by a female director in the Circle Women’s Doc Accelerator. It includes 1,000 euros and mentoring by EWA members and DOK Leipzig. This year, the award was split. The financial support was given to the Ukrainian production BETWEEN TWO WARS by Alina Gorlova, while the mentoring was offered to Anna Savchenko for the project 72 HOURS, a co-production of Belgium, France and Belarus.
The Zonta Club Leipzig Elster Female Talent Development Prize is a travel scholarship of up to 1,000 euros to help a female producer or director expand her network and develop her career. This year, the scholarship was awarded to South African director Godisamang Khunou, enabling her to participate in the DOK Co-Pro Market with her project BLACK WOMEN AND SEX.
The D-Facto Motion Work-in-Progress Prize was awarded for the first time. This award, which includes 10,000 euros’ worth of post-production services, is given to an outstanding documentary film project that has been presented at DOK Preview Germany. This year, the award went to Christoph Eder’s project WHO OWNS MY VILLAGE.
You’ll find information about all of DOK Leipzig’s juries here:
Christoph Terhechte will be artistic director of DOK Leipzig as well as managing director of Leipziger Dok-Filmwochen GmbH effective 1 January 2020, the Leipzig City Council resolved on Wednesday (30 Oct. 2019). Christoph Terhechte is being given a five-year contract. He will succeed Leena Pasanen, who will be leaving the festival after five years.
Journalist and film critic Christoph Terhechte is currently artistic director of the Marrakech International Film Festival. From 2001 to 2018, he served as director of the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale, which he developed into one of the major international centres of independent artistic cinema. Christoph Terhechte was born in Münster in 1961. He studied political science and journalism in Hamburg and was a film critic in Paris and Berlin.
The 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig, one of the leading festivals for documentary and animated film, is currently being held up to and including 3 November. The festival is showing a total of 310 films and interactive works.
DOK Leipzig had its ceremonial opening on Monday (28 Oct.), attended by some 700 people, with the world premiere of the film THE FORUM. The film team of the opening film was represented by director Marcus Vetter and the team of gebrueder beetz filmproduktion, along with one of the film’s protagonists: Murat Sönmez, leading board member of the World Economic Forum, went on stage with the filmmakers.
Festival Director Leena Pasanen moderated the event, emphasising the opening film’s significance: “THE FORUM not only offers an exclusive look behind the scenes of this powerful inner circle; it also deals with the necessity of maintaining a dialogue. In these times, that’s something we need more urgently than ever,” Pasanen said. “But we don’t just want to discuss the topics raised by our opening film. During our two-day symposium, we want to engage with each other and discuss crucial films.”
Alongside Leena Pasanen, the speakers at the opening ceremony included Dr Eva-Maria Stange, the Saxon State Minister for Science and the Arts, and Dr Skadi Jennicke, the mayor and cultural alderman of the City of Leipzig.
In her opening remarks, State Minister Dr Eva-Maria Stange emphasised the festival’s values and talked about the commitment to equality of opportunity that the Saxon State Ministry for Science and the Arts and DOK Leipzig share: “Founded as a pan-German festival and the largest of its kind in Germany, DOK Leipzig became part of the European cultural scene after only a few years and soon began to have an international impact. For more than 60 years, DOK Leipzig has stood for qualities that unite people and for strengthening commonalities. To this day, the festival has carried on this tradition, and I expressly support the unequivocal position of the makers of DOK Leipzig towards the values that largely define the festival programme: democracy, freedom, tolerance and solidarity. This year, more than 50 per cent of the directors in the Official Selection are female, and I am pleased that, for the first time, we will be able to award the Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts.”
Dr Stange presented the 5,000-euro Development Prize to the award-winner during the opening ceremony. Receiving the honour was the South African project BLACK WOMEN & SEX by director Godisamang Khunou. Honourable mention went to the South Korean project MY MISSING AUNT by director Juyeon Yang. Considered for the award were projects by female directors which had been selected for the DOK Co-Pro Market. A panel of judges had decided on a winner immediately prior to the festival. The award is sponsored by the Saxon State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts.
Festival Director Leena Pasanen thanked Dr Stange and the State Ministry for their commitment. “Establishing gender equality in the film industry is very important to us. I’d like to thank Dr Stange for not only being on our side on these issues, but for being a driving force. With the support of the State Ministry, we have also been working to make the festival more accessible to the disabled.” During the course of the opening ceremony, Leena Pasanen also thanked the mayor and cultural alderman: “In spite of some differences we’ve had in working with the city, Skadi Jennicke has always been on the side of the festival throughout the years and has supported DOK Leipzig through her interest in the work of the team.”
Until Sunday (3 Nov.), DOK Leipzig is showing a total of 310 works from 63 countries. During the course of the festival week, some 2,000 international industry professionals are expected to attend. In her remarks, mayor and cultural alderman Dr Skadi Jennicke emphasised the significance of this year’s selection of films and thanked Leena Pasanen for her work as festival director: “In just a few days, in 310 films and interactive works, DOK Leipzig is shedding light on the pressing issues of the day. I believe that documentary film is the art form of the moment. It forces us to take a look and to precisely observe details. I thank Leena Pasanen for the fact that she has used her grasp of the issues of the day to help the festival continue to make a name for itself and to open itself further to urban society. Each year, DOK Leipzig welcomes numerous international guests, who along with the people of Leipzig make the festival a place to pause and reflect deeply.”
Parallel to the world premiere at CineStar 8, THE FORUM was also screened in the East Hall (Osthalle) of Leipzig’s Central Station, with the film team attending. This event was held in cooperation with the PROMENADEN Hauptbahnhof Leipzig and supported by IQ Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbH and the DOK Leipzig Circle of Friends (Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e.V.).
The Golden Doves and further festival awards will be presented at the award ceremony on Saturday evening. DOK Leipzig 2019 is Leena Pasanen’s final edition as festival director.
This year, DOK Leipzig is presenting 310 films and interactive works from 63 countries. Altogether, 3,000 films were considered, of which 161 have made it into the festival’s Official Selection.
"The diversity we bring to Leipzig through our film selection is a special quality of our festival, whether it comes in the form of thematic variety or multi-layered perspectives,” says festival director Leena Pasanen. "But we’re not concentrating purely on the scale of the assortment. Instead, we aim to showcase a wide spectrum of artistic documentary films from around the world in all their facets.”
In the films in its various programmes and competitions, DOK Leipzig is turning the spotlight on global politics, on the image of women in contemporary society, on stories of families and on political depravity. Media phenomena such as fake news and whistleblowing, as well as murders committed by far-right extremists in Germany, are on the minds of filmmakers, as are environmental degradation and the effects of global economic processes that, in many places, are leading to an overexploitation of human and natural resources.
“It came about almost organically that the grand subjects and issues of current global affairs are reflected in the films in our programmes. Nonetheless, we don’t regard our festival first and foremost as a platform for extended news coverage. Rather, with unabating energy, we are searching for different hues of documentation. Sounding out the boundaries of nonfictional narrative is an ever-present factor in our decisions,” explains curator Ralph Eue.
Included in the Official Selection are films by such internationally renowned and award-winning filmmakers as Marcus Vetter, Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, Christoph Hübner and Gabriele Voss, the Brothers Quay and Nino Kirtadze. The Section Late Harvest, which puts the festival highlights of the season on the big screen, brings together films by Jacqueline Zünd, Anca Damian and Werner Herzog, among others. The Official Selection also includes works by promising young talent.
DOK Leipzig’s Official Selection includes six competitions as well as the International Programme and the Section Late Harvest. This year, DOK Leipzig is proud to present 63 world premieres, 27 international, 12 European and 50 German premieres. More than half of the directors of films in the Official Selection are female. In the German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, for which a 40/60 quota was introduced in 2018, eight of ten films were made by female directors or co-directors.
“We are taking initial stock of the quota following our two-year trial period,” says Leena Pasanen. “It might still be too early to make a pronouncement for the long term, but we are proud of the fact that some 45% of our total submissions are now coming from female directors. That’s five per cent more than in previous years. Female directors appear to be gaining confidence in submitting their films. The gap between the sexes is constantly shrinking.”
DOK Leipzig is being held this year from 28 October to 3 November. The festival will open on 28 October with the world premiere of the film THE FORUM by Marcus Vetter.
The interactive exhibition, which runs from 29 October to 2 November 2019 in the scope of DOK Leipzig, will be shown for the first time at Leipzig’s Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK). The immersive worlds of the twelve new media works featured here, hailing from countries such as Kenya, Taiwan, and Israel, offer viewers a chance to encounter underrepresented narratives and stories situated beyond the usual perspectives of majority society.
“With the MdbK and Alfred Weidinger, we are delighted to have found a partner who shares our vision for DOK Neuland, and whose space also lends itself to creating the right atmosphere for the exhibition together,” enthused festival director Leena Pasanen. "We are proud that, with DOK Neuland, the team has established a format that has not only been embraced by our regional audience over the past 5 years, but that more and more international guests and artists have also been turned on to the exhibition and that we are able to show such a variety of international works.”
These international works offer multi-layered perspectives: whether providing insight into the point of view of physically challenged individuals (4 FEET: BLIND DATE), conveying a mind-expanding experience guided by an indigenous Shipibo shaman (AYAHUASCA), or depicting an interreligious encounter in Jerusalem (THE HOLY CITY). LE LAC even treats the shrinking of Kenya’s Lake Chad as seen by the life-giving body of water itself. In DARK ORIGINS: MEPHISTO, viewers have the opportunity to travel to the subsurface habitat of the extremophile roundworm species Halicephalobus mephisto, an organism that proves the community of animate creatures is far larger than once suspected. This year, DOK Neuland takes a step towards embracing a plurality of truths and the parallel presence of a vast number of existential realities. “Instead of diving into virtual worlds, we leave the matrix in our heads behind here,” commented Lars Rummel regarding his central aim as curator of the programme.
The narratives featured here also include painful experiences and events, such as the confrontation with police violence at Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014 (AFTERMATH), or the necessity of “safe places” for African-American travellers, which is treated in a 360° film situated in the thematic tradition of the “Negro Motorist Green Book” (TRAVELING WHILE BLACK), a survival guide for black citizens of the United States created in the 1930s. The programme for DOK Neuland also covers material of a polarising or juxtapositional nature. Case in point: CANDY WORLD, a piece originating in Leipzig that recontextualises quotes and comments from the most hate-filled corners of the web (namely the forums of 4chan and 8chan) within a pink Candy-Crush-like world. Then there is UNCEDED TERRITORIES, which uses a gamified approach to explore the (post)colonial habit of appropriation and its tendency to annex and destroy newly “discovered” areas and natural environments.
By contrast, the piece YOUR SPIRITUAL TEMPLE SUCKS offers an experience that falls more squarely on the fun side. Inspired by Taoist rituals for the care of temple interiors, John Hsu satirises the influence an ill-kept temple might have on the “real” external relationship to its social environment. Finally, with HANAHANA FULL BLOOM, Mélodie Mousset constructs an experiential world in which participants can entwine and attach hands and arms of various sizes and colours with one another free from the constrictions of an existing narrative, resulting in a nearly infinite labyrinth of extremities.
Responsible for the look and feel of the exhibition is Leipzig artist Paula Gehrmann, who created a site-specific installation for this year’s DOK Neuland that draws on elements of sculpture and functional design.
DOK Neuland is once again supported by ARTE. Promoting the use of new digital technologies to develop innovative approaches to storytelling is one of the European cultural channel’s key missions. With CESARE’S DREAM, ARTE is showing a 360° film adaptation of the nearly 100-year-old classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI in the scope of the exhibition. This unique VR experience, which originated as a commissioned work for the Goethe Institute in Warsaw, enables viewers to explore the sets and ideas of the silent film classic virtually, from the inside.
DOK Neuland is part of the DOK Nachwuchs programme and is realised in cooperation with the SLM
As in previous years, our Festival Centre, the DOK Film Market, and the Get-Togethers for industry guests will also be located at MdbK. In co-operation with DOK Leipzig, DREFABRIK will be presenting the DOK Neuland Award for an exceptional project from the exhibition for the second time, featuring 1,000 euros in prize money. This year’s DOK Neuland technology partner is the tech subscription service Grover, which has been supporting digital artists and creators by providing access to technical equipment since 2017.
From 28 October to 3 November some 1,800 trade visitors will flock to Leipzig for networking at Germany's largest documentary film gathering.
"DOK Industry celebrates its 15th anniversary this year and we are delighted to reap the rewards of our many years of work,” says Brigid O'Shea, the Head of DOK Industry. “We’re welcoming a diverse selection of accredited experts. Up-and-coming filmmakers gaining their first experience in film school delegations, as well as award-winning film professionals will all mingle here in Leipzig, the meeting place for artistic documentary film".
As part of the rough-cut presentation DOK Preview Germany, a prize will be awarded to one of seven German film projects seeking international distribution partners. Donated by the production house D-Facto Motion, the DFM Work-In-Progress Award includes a post-production grant of 10,000 euros. Seven further projects will also be invited to the rough-cut presentation DOK Preview Training, an event taking place in cooperation with the same number of European training initiatives.
“Our priority is artistic documentaries, but this year we are also very happy to offer more opportunities for animators," says O’Shea. "Of course we're about films and projects, but supporting people and promoting their work has always remained close to our hearts. We want to expand networks and sustainably enrich our industry."
The festival has designed a stimulating discussion forum for the interactive genre with the XR conference DOK Exchange. Participants include VR expert Paisley Smith (USA), who will talk about the concept of co-creation, having realised her VR-experience "Unceded Territories" together with the indigenous artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Sandbox Immersive Festival curator Che Lin will present Chinese VR and XR festivals. And Julia Scott-Stevenson of i-Docs will tackle the ethical questions of merging the profound effect of immersive works into artistic utopias over dystopias.
With DOK Short n’ Sweet, the focus is all about short films. As in previous years, the forum provides filmmakers with the opportunity to pitch their documentary shorts to renowned editors and financiers. This year's pitch panelists include Charlie Philips of The Guardian, Raffi Krigel of RYOT Films, director of the Berlinale Shorts Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck, and Wouter Jansen of Some Shorts.
At Meet the Experts, filmmakers can exchange ideas with industry heavyweights in multiple fields. Representatives of international training initiatives, festival programmers, and experts from the fields of interactive, animation and artistic documentary film will all be available for these discussions.
In the Meet the Filmmakers talks, DOK Leipzig will be taking a deeper look at the politics, aesthetics and cinematic narration of productions from this year's film programme. The talks will also focus on the special narrative style of Iranian film, hybrid film forms, and the significance of different production countries in a globalised world.
Parallel to DOK Leipzig, the EAVE Producers Workshop will also be offering further development support to filmmakers from 28 October to 4 November.
The jury for the International Competition for Long Documentary and Animated Film consists this year of Albanian filmmaker lris Elezi, scriptwriter and filmmaker Jaqueline Zünd and filmmaker Goran Dević. Iris Elezi received numerous international awards for her feature-film debut BOTA, released in 2014, which went on to become Albania’s official submission to the Academy Awards 2016. Swiss director Jacqueline Zünd’s works, such as her first documentary for cinema GOODNIGHT NOBODY (2010), have been shown at a host of international festivals, including Cannes, Visions du Réel and DOK Leipzig, where they have been honoured with numerous prizes. This year, her most recent documentary WHERE WE BELONG will be screened at DOK Leipzig in the Late Harvest section. The third member of the jury, Goran Dević, who took part in the International Competition at DOK Leipzig in 2018 with his film ON THE WATER, contributed the film THE STEEL MILL CAFÉ to this year’s Country Focus on Croatia.
“This year we’ve once again managed to recruit international jury members who can apply the expertise they’ve gained from their respective professional backgrounds in diverse areas of the film world,” commented Leena Pasanen. “It’s beautiful to see the way relationships form and become deeper over the years, so that we can now welcome former participants from our programmes in other roles, for instance.”
In the International Competition for Short Documentary and Animated Film, prize winners will be selected by Jennifer Lynde Barker, Associate Professor for film studies with a focus on cinema history and animation at Bellarmine University in Louisville (USA), Estonian filmmaker and artist Mait Laas, who curated the Special Programme Light Through Darkness. The Mystic Jakob Böhme and Animation for DOK Leipzig, and Charlie Philips, head of video at The Guardian.
The jury for the Next Masters Competition for Long Documentary and Animated Film is made up of Tan Pin Pin, who is honoured by an Homage at DOK Leipzig 2019, Wieland Speck, long-time director of the Panorama section at the Berlinale, and Petri Kemppinen, who has served as managing director at Nordisk Film & TV Fond since 2013.
The winners of the German Competitions for Long and Short Documentary and Animated Film will be decided this year by filmmaker and managing director of AG Verleih Leopold Grün, who has already supported DOK Leipzig as a member of the festival’s selection committee, director of Filmpunkt GmbH Stefan Tolz, who produced a film which won multiple awards at DOK Leipzig in 2016 (CAHIER AFRICAIN), and film journalist Marie Ketzscher, who specialises in animated film and serves as press co-ordinator for Berlinale Talents, among other roles.
The prize winners for DOK Leipzig 2019 will be honoured at the festival awards ceremony on 2 November. The 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig will take place from 28 October to 3 November 2019 – the festival will again feature more than 300 films.
The 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig will open on 28 October 2019 with the world premiere of director Marcus Vetter’s documentary THE FORUM. Vetter and producer Christian Beetz are the first in the fifty-year history of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to succeed in sending an independent film team behind the scenes of this international gathering.
As the film follows 81-year-old Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the WEF, over the course of a year, the global agenda includes such challenges as climate change, Brexit, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the rise of populism, and trade tensions between the United States and China.
“THE FORUM is one of the most complex films we’ve ever made. It took us five years to gain access to the elites — always on the premise of getting an impartial look behind the scenes of the World Economic Forum,” says producer Christian Beetz. “In an age of prompt answers to the world’s greatest challenges, THE FORUM shows how complex and controversial the details of our world have become. THE FORUM provides a look at democracy with its global capitalist economic system and points out the dilemmas all of us face every day.”
Behind closed doors, the camera documents how diplomacy works when the world’s most powerful leaders are secluded and when Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro courts leading CEOs. Corporations such as Monsanto are represented alongside NGOs. Organisations like Greenpeace with Jennifer Morgan, an avowed critic of the World Economic Forum, and activist Greta Thunberg use the forum to sensitise key political and economic figures to the subject of climate change. Can the World Economic Forum contribute to a solution of global problems such as climate change, de-escalate trade wars or advance the worldwide provision of medical care? Or is the forum part of the problem, ultimately serving to enforce the vested interests of a global elite?
“We are pleased to open the festival with Marcus Vetter’s latest film, which offers us a unique inside perspective of one of the best-known stages of global politics,” says festival director Leena Pasanen. “Although we’re familiar with certain images from TV news, for example, THE FORUM makes especially clear how, by observing their subjects over a longer period, documentaries can contribute to a more nuanced perception of individual procedures. THE FORUM is great cinema that at the same time permits reflection upon political realities and entanglements.”
Director Marcus Vetter is a recipient of Germany’s most prestigious film awards. He received the German Film Award for HEART OF JENIN, the German Television Award for THE TUNNEL, and several Grimme Awards. Marcus Vetter has also been a familiar face in Leipzig. In 2008, he was honoured with the DEFA Sponsoring Prize for HEART OF JENIN. Financial markets and the global economy have been the subject of some of Vetter’s other productions, including THE FORECASTER from 2015.
THE FORUM is a German-Swiss co-production by gebrueder beetz filmproduktion, Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, Filmperspektive, SWR/ARTE, HR, BR, SRF, SRG SSR and VPRO.
On 28 October 2019, DOK Leipzig’s opening ceremony will be held in CineStar 8, the film team and Klaus Schwab will be present. The ceremony will be broadcast live to the screen in CineStar 6. THE FORUM will also be shown to the public free of charge at Leipzig’s Central Station (East Hall), with the film team attending. This event is made possible in cooperation with the PROMENADEN Hauptbahnhof Leipzig and by the support of IQ Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbH and the Friends of DOK Leipzig (Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e.V.).
On 1 January 2020, Christoph Terhechte is to take over as the new artistic director of the DOK Film Festival and managing director of Leipziger Dok-Filmwochen GmbH. A selection committee has recommended Mr. Terhechte as the most suitable candidate taking part in the selection process. This appointment has already been preliminarily discussed by the company’s supervisory board. The partners’ representative and Lord Mayor Burkhard Jung has now also confirmed the result, so that the final vote can be taken by the council board at their next meeting, expected to take place on 30 October.
Christoph Terhechte will take over from Leena Pasanen, whose term as artistic director will end as scheduled after five years. Dr. Skadi Jennicke, Mayor of Culture and chairwoman of the board, comments: “With Christoph Terhechte, the City of Leipzig has won an artistic director with an artistic vision, international reputation and great experience as well as sensitivity. This will be a key advantage in guiding the festival with regard to deepening its ties to the city’s community, but also for the national and international importance of DOK Leipzig.”
As is customary for managing directors employed by the City of Leipzig, the position is initially limited to five years. The selection committee consisted of the members of the supervisory board, who are also city councillors representing every council faction, chairwoman of the board, Dr. Skadi Jennicke, as well as external experts Claas Danielsen – managing director of Mitteldeutsche Medien-förderung; Heino Deckert – film producer and managing director, Daniel Waser – managing director of Zürcher Filmstiftung, and Donata von Perfall – director of Documentary Campus e.V.
The journalist and film critic Christoph Terhechte is currently artistic director of the Marrakech International Film Festival. From 2001 to 2018 he served as director of the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale, which he developed into one of the major international centres of independent artistic cinema. Christoph Terhechte was born in Münster in 1961 and studied political sciences and journalism in Hamburg. He worked as a film critic in Paris and Berlin and was head of the cultural desk of the Berlin city magazine “Tip” from 1991 to 1997.
DOK Leipzig is one of the leading festivals for documentary and animated films. Unique in its combination of the two genres, DOK Leipzig builds on more than 60 years of history, continuously enriching tradition through innovative approaches and forms. Its focus is always on the values of peace, tolerance, human dignity and freedom of opinion. The Festival programme features films with a strong artistic and personal signature. +++
Media contact:
Cultural Department, Phone +49(0)341 123-4209,
e-mail: kulturdezernat [at] leipzig [dot] de
This year the 15th DOK Co-Pro Market once again provides the opportunity for international film projects still in development to find co-production and financing partners. Some 309 projects were submitted, 35 of which have now been selected for the platform. They come from 40 countries.
“For the last years we've put the priority on looking for and engaging with filmmakers not to fill diversity quotas, but more because our curiosity drives us to crave different perspectives and voices. We choose to work with professionals whose points of view challenge the status quo,” says Brigid O’Shea, head of DOK Industry. “Without exaggeration, the overall quality of the 309 submissions for the DOK Co-Pro Market was incredibly high this year, and we had tough decisions to make.”
The selected film projects present a great variety of visual languages, narrative perspectives and thematic approaches. These include film projects that deal with the realities of living in a diaspora or accompany people who, due to current social or political upheavals, have had to shift their centre of life Other directors provide intimate insights into personal family stories.
Ukrainian producer and programmer Darya Bassel (Docudays UA) and Jamila Wenske, managing director of the production company Achtung Panda!, were jointly responsible for the project selection.
On the first two festival days, 28 and 29 October 2019, around 900 individual meetings will take place at the DOK Co-Pro Market, where producers will encounter potential partners. These include international financiers and co-producers from broadcasters ARD, SVT, SRF, ORF, ARTE France and RAI. New partners such as Mubi, Vice, Ryot Films and other representatives of leading online platforms will also be taking part.
“We hope to delight decision makers with wonderful new creative documentary projects. But of equal importance is building the network — to collect a reflective, enthusiastic group of people who attend the market with the intention of finding innovative ways to work together and ensure that projects with challenging points of view and artistic styles can be completed,” says Brigid O’Shea.
Four prizes will be awarded as part of the DOK Co-Pro Market.
New this year is a prize from the Saxon State Minister for the Arts, which is awarded to an outstanding documentary film project by a woman director. The 5,000 euro prize has been donated by the Saxon Ministry of Science and Art and will be presented at the festival opening on 28 October.
For the second time, the Zonta Club Leipzig Elster, which promotes women in professional life, is sponsoring the Zonta Club Leipzig Elster Female Talent Development Prize, a travel expense scholarship worth up to 1,000 euros. This year the prize goes to South African director and producer Godisamang Khunou, who is participating in the DOK Co-Pro Market with her project "Black Women and Sex,” and will have the opportunity to expand her professional network at the festival.
The European Women's Audiovisual Network is also continuing its partnership with DOK Leipzig. Together with the EWA, the festival is awarding for the first time a development prize worth 1,000 euros to a documentary filmmaker taking part in the Circle Women Doc Accelerator training programme. In addition to the prize money, the filmmaker will also receive mentoring in the further development of her film.
For the second time, the Current Time TV and DOK Co-Pro Development Prize will be awarded to a documentary film project from Eastern or Central Europe. It is endowed with 2,000 US dollars and awarded by DOK Leipzig and the Russian-language channel Current Time TV.
Find the complete DOK Co-Pro Market project selection here: https://www.dok-leipzig.de/de/industry/co-pro-market/projects-2019
DOK Leipzig has a new prize donor. For the 62nd edition of the festival, film distributor Weltkino is donating the 10,000-euro Golden Dove in the German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film. Each year from among the films submitted, the festival selects some ten outstanding German productions for this prestigious competition, all of them contending for this award.
“We love good films and we love Leipzig. For this reason, supporting DOK Leipzig is a particular delight,” says Michael Kölmel, who manages Weltkino along with Dietmar Güntsche. “Documentaries and animated films are both very important to Weltkino’s selection of films, so we are eagerly looking forward to this year’s competition.”
In recent years, DOK Leipzig has continually shown films that Weltkino has subsequently brought to cinemas. These have included, for example, the documentaries ZWISCHEN DEN STÜHLEN by Jakob Schmidt and NEO RAUCH – GEFÄHRTEN UND BEGLEITER by Nicola Graef (both German Competition DOK Leipzig 2016) as well as the animated film LOVING VINCENT by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman.
DOK Leipzig’s director, Leena Pasanen, is excited to have Weltkino on board as a new prize donor: “We are tremendously pleased about this excellent commitment by Weltkino and are very grateful to Michael Kölmel and his team. In donating this award, the distributor underscores the fact that our competition films are just at the start of an eventful journey. A remarkable number of films that premiere at DOK Leipzig find a distributor and then public appraisal in cinemas.”
The independent distributor Weltkino, headquartered in Leipzig, brings about 12 films a year to German cinemas, including such international productions as PATERSON by Jim Jarmusch and FAHRENHEIT 11/9 by Michael Moore. This year, Weltkino is putting the animated film FRITZI – EINE WENDEWUNDERGESCHICHTE, Olivia Wilde’s debut film BOOKSMART and the documentary ARETHA FRANKLIN: AMAZING GRACE, among others, on the big screen.
The 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig will be held this year from 28 October to 3 November. DOK Leipzig will present a total of seven Golden Doves along with further festival awards at the award ceremony on 2 November 2019.
This year, DOK Leipzig will be showing a total of more than 300 films and interactive works from around the world.
DOK Leipzig will announce the Official Selection of films — and thus the films in competition — on 10 October.
The Brothers Quay, masters of stop-motion and puppet animation, are distinguished guests at this year’s edition of DOK Leipzig. In the Brothers Quay Night*footnotes they’ll personally give the audience a glimpse of their creative work. In the Special Programme Potentiae Materialis: Homage Brothers Quay, DOK Leipzig will be showing a selection of the artistic duo’s ethereal, sometimes creepy, but always striking works. Part of the programme will consist of a series of films that the brothers have been given carte blanche to curate themselves. In addition, the Brothers Quay have contributed this year’s festival trailer.
The brothers’ works have earned them invitations to notable international festivals (to Cannes, for example, for IN ABSENTIA) as well as numerous awards. Deeply fascinating and disturbing, their films often explore the boundary between waking life and the world of dreams. The brothers’ oeuvre is pervaded by adaptations of literary works, such as by Robert Walser (INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, OR THIS DREAM PEOPLE CALL HUMAN LIFE). They have often collaborated with some of the big names in contemporary music, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, and have produced numerous music videos, such as for Sparklehorse, 16 Horsepower and Peter Gabriel. Their best-known fans include director Christopher Nolan, who made the short film QUAY about the brothers in 2015.
Other sides of the world of animated film present themselves in the works of multidisciplinary artists Brenda Lien (recipient of the 2018 German Short Film Award in the area of experimental film) and Max Colson. Both combine varieties of animated film with documentary and experimental elements, and both have had films of theirs shown at DOK Leipzig. While Brenda Lien critically addresses the new media and social media phenomena (such as make-up tutorials and cat videos), Max Colson works with 3D visualizations and explores such subject areas as architecture and types of housing, nationality and identity, among others. In the Animation Perspectives: Brenda Lien_Max Colson programme, Lien and Colson will introduce each other’s work and discuss it with the audience.
Dialogue is also at the centre of the third Special Programme on animated film. Licht durch Finsternis. Der Mystiker Jakob Böhme und die Animation brings together fascinating works from 100 years of animated film. The starting point is the notion of Görlitz-born philosopher Jakob Böhme that light and darkness each require the other in order to exist. In this Special Programme, Estonian filmmaker and artist Mait Laas applies this idea to cinema as he contrasts eight animated films: four in the category of “Light”, four in the category of “Darkness”.
Once again, of course, there are also animated films for festivalgoers of all ages. Two of the four Kids DOK series present amusing and charming animated short films for children from the ages of 3 and 5. Two further series for children starting at ages 8 and 10 offer a selection of documentary and animated films whose protagonists are all children who share their lives with the audience.
All films and events that are part of the Special Pprogrammes already announced – including the Retrospective, the Country Focus and the Homage – have now been finalized. Included are films by Dominik Graf, Volker Koepp, Thomas Heise, Avi Mograbi, Lorelei Pepi, Goran Dević, Tan Pin Pin, Bill Morrison and Priit Pärn.
In addition, Jürgen Kuttner will once again present one of his popular film and video snippet performances. Titled In the Mirror the Image of the Enemy it targets his familiar cynical humour on speech fragments and images he’s found in East and West German broadcasts from the time when Germany was divided.
Altogether, DOK Leipzig is showing more than 300 films and interactive works this year. DOK Leipzig will announce the interactive works of DOK Neuland on 8 October and the Official Selection on 10 October.
During this year’s edition, DOK Leipzig aims to create even more room for debate. The festival is putting on a two-day symposium entitled Who Owns the Truth? to explore and discuss the different ways in which filmmakers engage with political opponents. The event is funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung).
Which political and aesthetic strategies can documentary filmmakers pursue when engaging with those diametrically opposed to their own worldview? Who makes the rules? And what separates a critical film from an affirmative one? These questions and similar ones are to be brought up by way of films, discussions and readings. Both film professionals and members of the public can take part in the discussions.
“During the last few editions of the festival, there were heated debates about the ‘right’ approach for documentaries whose protagonists don’t share one’s own value system”, explains festival director Leena Pasanen. “These discussions were accompanied by the concern that filmmakers might be brought into direct association with their protagonists. What emerged is just how contested the truth really is. That’s why the title of the symposium will also be the motto of this year’s edition. We want to direct similar questions also at other films at the festival under the slogan ‘Who Owns the Truth?’ and discuss them in Q&As with the audience.”
Debating films represents the starting point for picking up on the same discussions in other contexts and taking them further. Programmer Ralph Eue, who initiated the symposium, adds, “We want to open up a space for productive ‘argument‘ and allow opinions to be exchanged. As a festival dedicated to artistic documentary, we am to be strong advocates for the versatility of documentary film and promote the art of looking at films in differentiated fashion.”
The films of the symposium also make up one of this year’s Special Programmes. The remaining curated Special Programmes also shine a light on film history, examine the filmmaking of individual countries or are dedicated to the work of outstanding artists.
With this year’s Homage, DOK Leipzig is honouring the filmmaking work of Singapore-based director Tan Pin Pin. In her oeuvre, the artist has persistently set her sights on Singapore’s national identity – sometimes to the displeasure of the island nation. Her film “To Singapore, with Love” (2013), in which she calls on political exiles living abroad, is still not allowed to be screened in Singapore to this day. At international festivals such as the Berlinale, Busan or Rotterdam, however, her audiovisual essays such as “Invisible City” (2007) have been celebrated. Tan Pin Pin’s works operate at the intersection between video and art, film and photography.
One key part of the Special Programmes is the Retrospective. This year’s Retrospective examines the forty years from 1949 to 1989 during which two German states existed. “We are working on the assumption that using films to look back at those forty years of history makes an important contribution to better understanding the oft-difficult socio-political aftermath of 1989”, comments Eue, who has curated the Retrospective together with Olaf Möller before the backdrop of the anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution. Confrontations at a level of both content and aesthetics are intended to come to the fore in the programme, because, as Eue continues, “The provisional nature of West Germany could always be better understood through the prism of the provisional nature of East Germany and vice versa. Each wrestled with the political enemy in equal measure, with this existential opposition to be reflected upon in the programme.”
The period around 1989 also had far-reaching consequences for Croatia – this year’s Country Focus revolves around its incredibly vital documentary film scene. The programme picks up on the sheer breadth of current filmmaking from the country and offers Leipzig audiences a diversity of different aesthetic approaches, thematic entry points and production conditions. The traces left behind by the wars of the 1990s, the systemic shift from socialism to capitalism and the related frictions and contradictions in people’s everyday lives are equally apparent in many of the films.
The festival is also celebrating East Germany’s only essay filmmaker, Eduard Schreiber, in its DEFA Matinee, which has grown into a proud tradition. The director’s 80th birthday is the perfect occasion for honouring Schreiber, who was a regular guest at the Leipzig Festival between 1960 and 1980.
The Re-Visions Special Programme also turns its attention to the past. For two years now, DOK Leipzig has been taking an ongoing look back at its own history and showing films that left their mark on the festival. “The approach we follow here is that history always stretches forward into the present. This idea also plays a role in the curation of all the Special Programmes”, concludes Ralph Eue.
This year, DOK Leipzig takes place from 28 October to 3 November. During the week of the festival, a total of over 300 films from across the world will once again be screened in the Official Selection and the Special Programmes.
DOK Leipzig thanks all the funding bodies and supporters of the Special Programmes:
the Federal Foundation for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in East Germany, the Saxon State Archive (Retrospective), Croatian Audiovisual Centre (Country Focus), the DEFA Foundation (DEFA Matinee).
The Special Programmes for animated film, the symposium programme and the films of the Special Programmes will be announced soon.
Female directors will have the chance to win a new prize at DOK Leipzig, in the form of financial support for the development of their film projects. Together with the Saxon State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts (SMWK), DOK Leipzig will award an outstanding documentary film project selected for the DOK Co-Pro Market, further expanding the festival’s commitment to women in the documentary industry. The Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts is endowed with 5,000 Euros. The DOK Co-Pro Market is the central event of the DOK Industry Programme and takes place annually on the first two festival days.
The Saxon State Minister for Science and the Arts, Dr. Eva-Maria Stange explains her commitment: "I am delighted to be able to contribute to the targeted support of women in the film industry in 2019 with The Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts. Thanks to the commitment of DOK Leipzig, last year already half of the festival’s Official Selection were productions by women directors. Films made by women are neither qualitatively better nor worse than their male counterparts, yet in most countries there is still a significant underrepresentation of female filmmakers, that is unjustifiable. Equality and diversity benefit not just those currently underrepresented but our society as a whole."
In recent years, the SMWK has actively supported the festival’s commitment to improving gender equality in documentary film. From 2017 until last year, the State Minister for the Arts Dr. Eva Maria Stange was the patron of the DOK Leipzig and EWA – European Women’s Audiovisual Network Development Prize, the first cash prize awarded at the DOK Co-Pro Market. The generous increase in engagement on the part of SMWK leads to the creation of this new award.
"We are incredibly grateful that our Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts wants to work with us on closing the gender gap, not only because it is urgently needed within the cultural industries, but also more broadly as a human rights issue" says the head of DOK Industry Brigid O'Shea. She continues: ”We are very happy that together with Dr. Stange we can continue to support women documentary filmmakers from all over the world."
The DOK Co-Pro Market will take place for the 15th time this year. International projects in development will have the opportunity to meet co-production and financing partners on 28 and 29 October. The Development Prize for the Best Female Director of the Saxon State Minister for the Arts will be awarded at the festival’s opening ceremony on October 28.
Projects selected for the DOK Co-Pro Market will also be eligible for other prizes including the Current Time TV and DOK Leipzig Development Award for an outstanding documentary film project from Central and Eastern Europe. The Zonta Club Leipzig-Elster again supports a talent development prize for female directors in the form of a travel bursary, allowing female documentary filmmakers to expand their network at DOK Leipzig.
Continuing the strong partnership with EWA - European Women's Audiovisual Network, for the first time a new prize endowed with 1,000 Euros will go to a filmmaker participating in the training program Circle Women Doc Accelerator. In addition to the prize money, the filmmaker will also receive mentoring from DOK Leipzig and EWA members.
Under the direction of Leena Pasanen, the team at DOK Leipzig has taken a strong commitment to improving gender equality not only in the production landscape but also in distribution of finished films. 2019 will be the second year a quota for female directors has been integrated in the festival’s national Competition. DOK Leipzig will take place from 28 October to 3 November.
Filmmakers and producers are welcome to submit documentary film projects for the DOK Co-Pro Market until August 1st
From now on documentaries, animated films and animated documentaries of all lengths as well as interactive works can be submitted to the 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig. The submitted films may be nominated for one of the festival’s six prestigious competitions and several special awards with a total prize money of about 75,000 euros. Additionally, DOK Leipzig is a qualifying festival for the ACADEMY AWARDS© and the European Film Awards.
“We are looking forward to productions that present unusual perspectives. Films rethinking traditional concepts or inventing new ones. Above all, we are looking for films revealing how documentary and animated film absorbs and expresses the present”, says Ralph Eue, programmer of DOK Leipzig.
All films submitted until 5 May 2019 will receive a binding feedback on their selection status by end of June. The final entry deadline for films and for interactive works is 7 July 2019.
Films eligible for submission are from 2018 and 2019 and have not been screened publicly before 1 October 2018. World or International premieres will be favoured. For all six competitions, a German premiere of the film at DOK Leipzig is mandatory.
Apart from films, you can also submit interactive works for the DOK Neuland exhibition. We welcome all forms of innovative new media works, such as 360° films, virtual reality projects (films, installations, plays), works of augmented reality or mixed reality, participatory films, web documentaries and apps.
In 2018, more than 3,000 production were submitted to DOK Leipzig. During the festival week 2019, around 300 films will be screened as part of the Official Selection and the Special Programmes. . The 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig will take place from 28 October to 3 November 2019.
