Leipzig 23

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.

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.

The new award for best feature-length animated film will be made during the next edition (8-15 Oct). In doing so, festival director Christoph Terhechte is “fulfilling his intention of giving greater prominence to feature-length animated films.” Though announced in 2020, the introduction of a distinct competition for feature-length animated films had to be postponed repeatedly due to the pandemic.

The project-based training programme, run by the Institute of Documentary Film (IDF), will take place 6 - 11 October 2023 in Germany for the first time, in collaboration with DOK Leipzig. “It brings us great joy to welcome the talented creative teams of documentary feature films and documentary series along with the knowledgeable and inspiring professionals who will be guiding and mentoring these teams," says DOK Industry Head Nadja Tennstedt.

October 9 sees the presentation to industry of eight new German documentary projects, either completed or as works-in-progress, and therefore poised for international roll-out. One of the projects will be awarded the D-Facto Motion Works-in-Progress Prize, which will provide post-production services valued at €10,000.

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.

Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori’s D-Facto Motion Works-in-Progress Prize-winning project tells of the Japanese phenomenon of ‘night moving’ companies that help people to vanish without a trace. “From the beginning I was kind of very fascinated with this idea of the possibility to restart your life, but also very intrigued about the consequences of leaving everything behind,” co-director Hartmann told the Leipzig audience.

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.

The astute, elegant and insightful observational gaze of Austrian documentary-maker Nikolaus Geyrhalter is focussed on Covid-1 and lockdown in his new film The Standstill (Stillstand). The documentary offers a haunting and thoughtful examination on this dark and challenging period as it impacted on his home country of Austria, and Vienna in particular.