Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler’s cinematic diary While The Green Grass Grows was the winner of the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig’s International Competition which took place in Germany from October 8-15.
The first two chapters of what will eventually be a seven-part film had previously won the Grand Prix at Nyon’s Visions du Réel last April. The film sees Mettler blending family history and existential anxieties to construct a free-flowing meditation on life, death and what lies beyond.
The international jury which included Jennifer Fox, Radu Jude and Marie-Pierre Macia described Mettler’s film in its motivation as “an unpredictable film whose quality of observation makes the viewer see everyday events, places and objects in a poetic new light.”
Mettler was also the subject of this year’s homage at DOK Leipzig and gave a masterclass on his particular approach to filmmaking.
The jury awarded the Silver Dove for the best feature-length documentary by an up-and-coming director to Armenian filmmaker Hovhannes Ishkhanyan for the Armenian-French co-production Beauty And The Lawyer about the relationship between a drag artist and a human rights lawyer.
This year saw the introduction of a Golden Dove to an animated feature screening in the international competition for animated films. The inaugural prize went to Chinese animator Xu Jingwei for No Changes Have Taken In Our Life which centres on a musician who tries in vain to find work after graduating from university.
Moroccan director Asmae El Moudir won the audience award for The Mother Of All Lies, which premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard and has since won multiple plaudits on the international festival circuit including the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival in June. The film explores a 1981 massacre in Casablanca through interviews and interactions with the director’s family and former neighbours, using tiny models of them and a miniature set of their former street made by her father.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Schörnig’s One Hundred Four, a real-time documentation of a rescue at sea in the Mediterranean, received the Golden Dove for best German feature and was also awarded the Goethe-Institut documentary film prize, including licensing and subtitling in eight languages. It shared the Leipziger Ring film orize with Nantenaina Lova’s Where Speaks French.
Further awards included the Interreligious Film Prize for Kumva - Which Comes From Silence by Sarah Mallégol and the Fipresci prize for South Korean filmmaker Taewoong Won’s Universe Department Store.
The 66th edition of DOK Leipzig presented 225 films and XR works from around 60 countries. Attendance over the eight days of the festival to film screenings and other events exceeded 45,000 this year.
Next year’s festival will run from October 28 to November 3, 2024.
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