World premieres of US filmmaker Chris Gude’s Morichales, about gold mining in Venezuela, Italian director Maria Mauti’s Miralles dedicated to the legacy of a Catalan architect, and La Jetée, The Fifth Shot by renowned French director Dominique Cabrera, are among the films selected for the international competition at this year’s DOK Leipzig festival.
It is taking place from October 28 to November 3 in Germany.
The international competition titles also include Ukrainian director Adelina Borets’s Flowers Of Ukraine, about a woman cultivating a small plot of land in Kyiv amid war. The project was presented at last year’s Preview Training in the DOK Industry programme.
The German competition will see world premieres of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s opening night film Tracing Light, Aysun Bademsoy’s Spielerinnen which sees her returning to follows the lives of five German-Turkish women footballers in Berlin as part of a long-term project started in 1995, Jennifer Mallmann’s Moria Six about the EU’s migration policy, and Maja Classen’s Truth or Dare about the exploration of intimacy, desire and diversity in sex -positive spaces.
Following festival director Christoph Terhechte’s decision last year to introduce a Golden Dove for the best feature-length animated film, there are five films competing in the international animation programme. They are: László Csáki’s debut feature Pelikan Blue, about a trio of Hungarian friends trying to reach western Europe by train, Niles Atallah’s mix of avantgarde animation and performance in Animalia Paradoxa, Heinrich Sabl’s Memory Hotel which probes the concept of German-Soviet guilt after the Second World War; Tomás Pichardo Espaillat’s Olivia & The Clouds, about the complexity of romantic relationships, and Yôko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Ghost Cat Anzu, about an 11-year-old girl who befriends with a giant talking cat.
There is also an audience competition for which the winner will be chosen by a jury of five local film enthusiasts. They will make their decision between 10 films including Peter Kerekes’ Wishing On A Star, Claire Simon’s Elementary, and Sandi DuBowski’s Sabbath Queen as well as Anna Thommen’s Naima, about which will be making its world premiere in Leipzig.
Overall, the festival will be showing 209 films and XR works from 55 countries. The wider programme includes homages to French documentary filmmaker Dominique Cabrera and Spanish animation artist Isabel Herguera (Sultana’s Dream) as well as a special tribute to the late German documentary filmmaker Thomas Heise.
“The films bear witness to a diverse and complex world,” said Terhecte. “Many of them point out alternatives to the status quo. They give hope. They do not deny the looming destruction of our natural resources; instead they are dedicated to examining what we want to preserve.”
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