A Hawk as Big as a Horse, which Sasha Kulak
DOK Leipzig has announced the competition selections for its 65th edition, incorporating International and German competitions, as well for the Audience Awards. Competing for the Golden and Silver Doves across this year are 74 films, 48 of which are being screened in Leipzig as international or world premieres.
The International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film is showcasing 13 works from the documentary film sector. These include films by first-time directors as well as works by multiple award-winning filmmakers. The range of form extends from observational style to performative dramatisations to the creative appropriation of archived images, the festival notes. The selection includes productions from Argentina, Canada, the Philippines and Lebanon. The festival offers an overview of what to expect.
Three documentary debut films use different approaches to tell biographical stories in the context of social institutions. The Dependents by Sofía Brockenshire combines a portrait of her father, a well-travelled Canadian immigration official, with reflections on borders, privileges and dependencies. In The Invisible Frontier, Mariana Flores Villalba films Mexican military exercises on a deserted island in the Pacific – and in doing so addresses the violent conditions in her country far from the images seen on film. Joseph Mangat’s Divine Factory portrays a factory outside Manila that manufactures statues of saints as a microcosm of the economic, social and spiritual conditions in the Philippines. These debut films by Brockenshire, Villalba and Mangat will each celebrate their world premiere in Leipzig.
Several films in this competition are based on archival research. Two of them take a look at colonial power structures: Tropic Fever by Mahardika Yudha, Robin Hartanto Honggare and Perdana Roswaldy examines visual material relating to Dutch colonists in Indonesia and finds the colonial ideology rooted in the plantation. Although there have been Dutch productions on similar themes, such as ‘Mother Dao, the Turtlelike’ (1995, Silver Dove), this is the first time an Indonesian feature film has appropriated these images. Meanwhile, in her latest film, Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels, Mila Turajlić, to whom this year’s DOK Leipzig Homage is dedicated, draws on footage taken by Josip Broz Tito’s favourite cameraman, whose work during the Algerian War was a foreign policy mission by Yugoslavia.
The French production A Hawk as Big as a Horse, which Sasha Kulak presented at DOK Industry in 2021, will be screened as a world premiere. The film portrays a transgender ornithologist named Lydia who in a performative way transforms her surroundings on the outskirts of Moscow into something resembling the universe of ‘Twin Peaks.’ The Canadian entry A Night Song by Félix Lamarche, also a world premiere, examines the controversial subject of assisted suicide. Also in competition arre the latest works by Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Matter Out of Place), Corine Shawi (Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist) and Hernán Fernández (Landscapes).
The International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film features a total of 24 works, of which eleven are animated and 13 are documentaries. The documentary entries take us from the remote tracks of a motor-driven backup train in Colombia to a three-generation household experiencing the lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic in New York City, the festival notes.
“The films at this year’s festival confront us with genuine social realities, but they also teach us that documentary images must be approached with scepticism,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. “At a time when deep fakes are circulating online, DOK Leipzig regards itself as a platform that enables a critical discussion of the way images are being created and the forms of truth that are resulting from this.”
In the German Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film,Uncanny Me engages with this examination of how reality is depicted. In Katharina Pethke’s film, a young woman decides to have a deceptively real avatar made of herself for her work as a model – thus raising questions of morality and individuality. In The Homes We Carry (director: Brenda Akele Jorde), the protagonist Sarah also reflects on her identity as the daughter of a German mother and a Mozambican father who was one of 20,000 contract workers in the GDR in the 1980s. When the Wall fell, he had to return to his home country and leave his family behind in Germany.
Also taking part in the German Competition is one of the three latest films by Heinz Emigholz, all of which are being screened at DOK Leipzig. Slaughterhouses of Modernity critiques German history by examining Argentinian, Bolivian and German architecture. Other competition entries include Tilman König’s portrait of his father, a former youth pastor from Jena whose stance against the far right was a source of controversy (Pastor Lothar Stops), Pepe Danquart’s Daniel Richter, about the well-known painter, and the latest film by Rainer Komers, which follows a man from Gelsenkirchen to his chosen country of residence, Japan (Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture).
In the Competition for the Audience Award Long Documentary and Animated Film, Pamela Meyer-Arndt’s entry also deals with the consequences of opposing the GDR. Rebels portrays the three artists Gabriele Stötzer, Cornelia Schleime and Tina Bara, each of whom ran afoul of the state. In 2019, the year of Volodymyr Zelensky’s election victory, Three Womenby Maksym Melnyk takes us to an isolated Ukrainian village near the EU border. Martyna Peszko’s Revolution 21 observes a theatre ensemble consisting of enthusiastic actors with Down’s Syndrome. All three films are celebrating their world premiere at this year’s edition of the festival.
The Competition for the Audience Award Short Documentary and Animated Film features a total of ten works, including a portrait of the band Moderat and a cinematic diary from Kyiv in the spring of 2022.
Complementing the programme of films will be roundtable discussions on core topics. ‘Conducting the Archive – Conversations on Footage’ will look, among other things, at the power structures involved in the collection of documents. In the DOK Talk ‘Architecture Film Art – Heinz Emigholz in Conversation’ Ralph Eue will welcome one of Germany’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers and artists. Parallel to the festival and along with screenings of Emigholz’s numerous films, a selection of his drawings will be exhibited at the Techne Sphere Leipzig from 14 October to 1 November.
The festival is presenting a total of 255 films and extended reality (XR) experiences from 55 countries, including 67 feature films and 179 short films. The Kinobar Prager Frühling theatre will be joining DOK Leipzig as a new festival cinema this year.
