New documentaries from Jasmila Zbanic, Ziad Kalthoum and Susanne Kim are among 34 projects from 32 countries selected for this year’s DOK Co-Pro Market (October 17-18) taking place during DOK Leipzig.
Zbanic, whose documentary One Day In Sarajevo was shown at DOK Leipzig in 2015, will be pitching Blum about the Jewish Bosnian businessman and philanthropist Emerik Blum. Syrian filmmaker Kalthoum, whose 2017 film Taste of Cement won the Grand Prix in Nyon among numerous other awards, will be in Leipzig with On The Edge Of My Shadow which already has production partners from Germany, France and the Palestinian territories onboard.
Meanwhile, Kim, whose feature film and VR project Cabinets Of Wonder was shown at DOK Leipzig last year, returns with her new documentary project Becoming Kim. It is described as “a very personal documentary portraying a Korean-German relationship”, to be produced by Leipzig/Berlin-based Neuefilm.
The Co-Pro Market organisers noted there had been a number of strong entries from Georgia this year, with three projects making it to the final line-up, including the French-Georgian production Kartli by Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Pebrel to be produced by Habilis Productions with Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi’s company Sakdoc Film.
In addition, Ukrainian documentary cinema will be represented by Svitlana Lishchynska’s A Bit Of A Stranger chronicling the lives of her Russian-speaking family and the impact of the Russian attacks on their homeland in Mariupol and the rest of Ukraine.
Four of the selected projects will be presented at Leipzig after winning the DOK Leipzig Accelerator Prize at training initiatives or film markets abroad in past months. They include Baltic UXO by the Lithuanian directorial duo Alexander Belinski and Agne Dovydaityte, which received the prize at East Doc Platform in Prague, and Kange by Arnold Aganze, an aspiring filmmaker originally from Eastern Congo, who had presented his project at South Africa’s Durban Filmart.
This year’s selection also includes a documentary series for the first time. The Sharp End Of The Knife by South Africa’s Godisamang Khunou of Mogale Pictures focuses on inmates of a women’s prison in Johannesburg who are serving life sentences after defending themselves from their violent husbands.
While 2021’s DOK Co-Pro Market was held as a hybrid event, the 18th edition - the second one under the management of the DOK Industry lead Nadja Tennstedt - will largely take place onsite in Leipzig.
However, in the run-up to the two-day event, DOK Industry will offer project representatives an opportunity for an online meeting to prepare for the market and build a sense of community.
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