DOK Leipzig 2023: The Verdict
With its socially and politically engaged agenda, DOK Leipzig’s 66th edition felt especially timely this year during a major period of global turbulence.
Leipzig 2023
DOK Leipzig 2023: The Awards
Peter Mettler’s personal and poetic reflection ‘While the Green Grass Grows’ wins DOK Leipzig’s Golden Dove as best international documentary.
Director Lina Soualem Talks about Palestine’s Oscar submission ‘Bye Bye Tiberias’
Lina Soualem is touring global festivals with her very personal documentary’ Bye Bye Tiberias’, in “a moment of great tragedy and despair”.
El Shatt — A Blueprint for Utopia
‘El Shatt’, a commune established by 28,000 Dalmatian Croats in colonial Egypt where they fled Nazi persecution in 1944, is remembered in Ivan Ramljak’s romanticized but well-researched documentary.
Play Dead!
Documentary director Matthew Lancit addresses his existential health fears through horror movie tropes in ‘Play Dead!’. a compelling hybrid blend of non-fiction and playful fakery.
One Hundred Four
‘One Hundred Four’ is the number of refugees stranded on one of the world’s deadly smuggling routes, the Mediterranean, in Jonathan Schörnig’s real-time documentary.
An Asian Ghost Story
Mass wig exportation becomes the lens through which the fascinating, spectral doc An Asian Ghost Story explores Hong Kong’s late 20th-century modernisation and position between East and West.
White Angel — The End of Marinka
A hard-hitting immersion into life and death under Russian invasion in eastern Ukraine, ‘White Angel – The End of Marinka’ is seen through an evacuation team’s GoPro helmet footage.
Johnny & Me
Director Katrin Rothe’s animated bio-documentary hybrid ‘Johnny & Me’ brings to life the visually striking photomontage work of pioneering political artist John Heartfield.
Compound Eyes of Tropical
One of the traditional fables of Sang Kancil, the wily mouse-deer, is brought exquisitely to life in Zhang Xu Zhan’s electrifying, otherworldly animation, Compound Eyes of Tropical
Going viral: an interview with ‘The Standstill’ director Nikolaus Geyrhalter
The feted Austrian documentary maker talks about capturing the Coronavirus crisis on camera, filming in perilous places, and his life-changing rejection from film school.
Beauty and the Lawyer
A married LGBTQ+ couple worry if a future Armenia will honour the rights of their non-conventional family, in this intimately observational, activism-based doc.
Lumene: Privatisation
In the complex and thought-provoking essay film, Lumene: Privatisation, David Shongo reflects on the commodification of cultural memory and the lasting impacts of insidious colonial impositions.
Togoland Projections
German director Jürgen Ellinghaus retraces the West African travels of a silent-era film director in ‘Togoland Projections’, a dry but engaging documentary about European colonialism’s screen legacy.
TFV Talks To Maria Fredriksson about The Gullspång Miracle
Maria Fredriksson plunged into the doc-making deep end for her debut feature ‘The Gullspång Miracle’, screening at DOK Leipzig.
The Standstill
Austrian documentary maker Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s symphonic Covid chronicle ‘The Standstill’ plays like a slow-motion disaster movie with immersive widescreen visuals.
The Mother of All Hybrids
Asmae El Moudir’s ‘The Mother of All Lies’ embodies both sides of DOK Leipzig’s festival identity.
Three Windows on South West
An ostensibly simplistic documentary about a flat in Kyiv, Three Windows on South West uses incidental memories to paint a fleeting collective portrait of another time.
Isabel Herguera, the Dream of a Master Animator
Spanish animator, author and producer Isabel Herguera bings her first feature to DOK L — a masterfully evocative work on feminism and women’s lives, ‘Sultana’s Dream’.
The Last Relic
Masses seduced by past imperialistic might and activists seeking change present clashing public spectacles in Marianna Kaat’s punchy, broad-strokes doc on modern Russia.
“A festival is not there to create comfort”: An interview with DOK Leipzig artistic director Christoph Terhechte
The head of the world’s oldest documentary film festival talks controversial programming choices, magical public screenings, and the need to learn from uncomfortable history lessons.
The Gullspång Miracle
Eerie, gripping and expertly crafted, Maria Fredriksson’s mind-bending doc takes myriad twists through a Nordic family mystery.
Knit’s Island
A trio of documentarians traverse the forbidding digital landscapes of an online survivalist video game to explore the communities that have emerged there in this verité machinima, Knit’s Island.