Dok Leipzig, Germany’s major festival for documentary and animated films, drew strong audiences across its programme this year. Its new “Focus East” section, created under festival director Ola Staszel, sold out at every event. The festival also awarded prizes across its international, German and animation competitions, including short-film programmes.
The section’s most widely attended film was Ina Borrmann’s documentary “Guten Morgen, du Schöne,” which opened the festival programme. It revisits Maxie Wander’s book of the same name, published nearly 50 years ago, in which women described their lives in East Germany. Some of the women featured in the book recall its creation and discuss their lives since then. The film was also screened for free at Leipzig’s main railway station, where around 1,000 people attended.
In the international documentary competition, the short-film award went to “They’re Here,” an American film by Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller about the US immigration agency ICE in Minneapolis. The festival account described the film as an activist work that connected with audiences and the jury ahead of the US midterm elections.
The international competition’s main award went to “Letters from the Silent Country,” a Polish-Lithuanian co-production by Andrei Kutsila. It follows three activists opposing the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, who are heard largely through letters sent from prison. The film also incorporates animated figures based on drawings by artist Kasia.
The German competition’s top award went to “Übergang,” completed by Peter Badel and Chris Wright using footage from the late director Thomas Heise’s unfinished project. Heise had intended the film as a personal account of his life for his husband. The finished work explores the shift from his biography in East Germany to life in reunified Germany.
Other winners included Chris Sullivan’s “The Orbit of Minor Satellites,” which took the animation competition award, and Rosa Gocht’s “Hallo Debus,” winner of the German short documentary prize. “Garten der Hoffnung,” Dieter Schumann’s film about a neighbourhood project in a Schwerin apartment-block district, screened in “Focus East” and found a receptive audience there.
Sources: FAZ.