DOK Leipzig 24

In Game Changers, Aysun Bademsoy returns to the female Turkish football players she first encountered in 1995, and has periodically covered since. The film continues to chronicle the lives of women with whom she has retained a strong bond. “They understand that it [the film] is not only about them. It is about a generation of Turkish women. And I think that I opened a door for German or European people to see a world they don’t know.”

Recently, director Dominique Cabrera’s cousin recognised himself as the young boy, seen from behind, in the fifth shot of Chris Marker’s 1962 masterpiece La Jetée. Thus began a remarkable cinephile detective story, in which coincidences, discoveries, echoes and twists end up in an endless hall of mirrors. Cabrera navigates this hall of mirrors with remarkable ease and clarity, driven by a fundamental curiosity about her subject and the people around her.

Anna Thommen talks to Business Doc Europe about her new doc, world-premiering in Leipzig, about a bohemian migrant struggling to establish herself in Swiss society, eventually turning to nursing, albeit within a deeply conservative health service. “It was really special for me,” the director says of the collaboration. Naima wasn’t just the subject of the movie but had a creative role too. “She is a character who belongs in cinema!”

In Natalia Pietsch and Grzegorz Piekarski’s feature project, a Kurdish shepherdess and an Arab barber face the consequences of a decision to flood their historic town of Hasankeyf (Kurdistan) after the construction of a massive dam. “This project is vital because it reveals the hidden impact of geopolitical control on human lives and culture,” Polish producer Katarzyna Kostecka tells BDE. “International audiences will connect with its universal themes of cultural loss, human resilience, and the consequences of state-driven displacement.”

In Ketevan Vashagashvili’s debut feature doc project, set for delivery in early 2025, a homeless Georgian woman becomes a surrogate mother in a desperate attempt to secure a brighter future for her daughter. What starts as a quick way to earn money transforms into an emotional and physical sacrifice, testing the limits of a mother’s love. “The impact campaign will aim to bring attention to the urgent need for stronger regulations in the surrogacy industry, both in Georgia and in the countries where intended parents come from,” producer Sylvia Nagel tells BDE.

Estonian director and German co-producer Dirk Manthey pitched their feature doc work-in-progress about the child of an eco-activist who, ten years after director Lillak first encountered her, is now struggling to cope with the intensity of her upbringing. “I think it is a timely project because it gives voice to the generation that is dealing with an enormous baggage. Baggage of climate anxiety, guilt and rage,” she tells BDE.

Local myth had it that when women in southern Italy were bitten by a tarantula, the only way to get rid of the poison seeping through their system was to dance out the toxin in a mad frenzy. “It is clearly related to extremely restrictive gender roles,” co-director Schäuble reflects on a sickness which seemed primarily to affect those already regarded as outsiders. “They were very often people who did not comply with strict gender norms and expectations.” The film world premieres in Leipzig.

Anja Reiss and Jann Anderegg’s Traces of Responsibility offers a multi-perspective exploration of the origins and aftermath of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. In the interactive film, the audience is taken on a journey through modern-day Rwanda but can, at strategic points, choose from the film’s numerous editorial lines, whether they be first-hand testimony, modern-day analyses of events, the trial of a war criminal, or expressions of hope for the future by Rwandan youth.

Maja Classen’s feature documentary world-premiering in Leipzig, may be highly explicit in its depiction of ‘sex positivity,’ but love, care and consent are at the heart of all the encounters we observe. “My purpose is to build a bridge with this film and to reach a wider audience, people who might be scared and have prejudices against queers and promiscuity,” the director tells BDE. “I want to gently take them by the hand and show them, that there is nothing to be afraid of. It’s all human.”

If you go to Niscemi in Sicily, you’ll find both picturesque woodland and, very incongruously, a US base housing a Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite ground station. Beside it lives Valentina, a woman in her 20s, together with her parents. “In the beginning, it [the film] started as a story about the base. But then, as I was discovering that the fight was gone and there was no hope anymore, I met the family. I found their resistance [to the base] very interesting,” director Francesca Scalisi tells BDE.