Leipzig 23

After Katharina Pethke returned to her job at the art academy after giving birth she began to realise that what makes her tick an artist was not so easily reconciled with her new role as a mother. Her own mother and grandmother before her gave up their careers as artists to stay home. And now her mum thinks Katharina should do the same. The director examines this dilemma in her feature doc Reproduction.

A raft of films in the Panorama section reflect the current state of a region under the influence of Russia, while the Focus: Post-1991 Slovenian Documentary Films section will screen outstanding Slovenian films made over the past three decades. 5x5 Shorts from the East is being presented together with an array of CEE partners while the Doc Alliance Award will screening 3 long and 3 short docs from the region.

Women Speaking tells the intriguing story of the Albanian Burrnesha, women who give up their femininity and live as men in order to gain a voice, experience personal freedom and fight for equality. “Although we see that their lives seem to be free and they have self-determination, there is still sadness and painful consequences,” co-director Nrecaj told the Leipzig audience.

The competition films for the 66th edition of DOK Leipzig have been finalized with a total of 71 films, including 35 world premieres, competing for the Golden and Silver Doves in 2023. “Quite a few films made during the pandemic had a personal angle. This year, the films have gone back to looking at broader societal and political themes – partly in order to understand what’s going on at the moment and explore how we can work towards a different future,” underlines festival director Christoph Terhechte.

The joyous self-sufficiency of elderly French woman Suzanne Claudel is celebrated in generous style in Stéphane Manchematin and Serge Steyer’s absorbing documentary Suzanne From Day to Day, which follows her throughout a year – and across all its various seasons – as she goes through her daily rituals in her isolated family home on the edge of a forest in the Hautes-Vosges.

Doc, fiction and animation luminaries include Radu Jude, Anne Isensee, Steven Markovitz and Serpil Turhan, who will deliberate over films in the International Documentary, International Animation and German competitions. A jury of film buffs, cineastes and festival goers will decide on films in the audience Competition. Seven Golden Doves and two Silver Doves will go to films in the four competitions.

The cinematic diary draws upon Swiss-Canadian Peter Mettler’s own memories and family relationships as it looks at life cycles and the way the world is constantly changing. One Hundred Four won German Doc Competition while the Audience Jury awarded The Mother of All Lies. The Silver Dove for best feature-length doc by an up-and-coming director, was awarded to Hovhannes Ishkhanyan for Beauty and the Lawyer.

On the face of it, the images we see in the post-war home films of Rose, the grandma of German director Annika Mayer, reflect nothing other than domestic bliss, good health and affluence, all set against a backdrop of the country’s economic recovery. But the footage we see hides 23 years of domestic violence, which is revealed by 90-year-old Rose as she is shown once more the Super-8 chronicle of her earlier life. The director talks to BDE.

DOK Leipzig came to a close 15 October with organisers calculating that the event attracted a total of 45,500 attendees. “The cinemas were packed,” commented Festival director Christoph Terhechte. “Although the week was overshadowed by the recent massacres, expulsions and bombings in Israel and Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, many of our attendees used the festival as an opportunity to exchange views on those issues and current events.”

“This year, it is quite obvious that filmmakers have gone out again, looking further…it was possible again after the lockdowns to go out into the world,” the Leipzig boss tells BDE about one of the trends within his 2023 programme. He also fulfils a longstanding ambition in 2023. For the first time, DOK Leipzig will host an International Competition for animated film.