DOKLeipzig Programme Announced

Today DOKLeipzig announced its programme for the festival, that runs from October 27 to November 2. Whether you like to highlight it or not, the press release stresses that the festival offers 41 world premieres – 29 documentary and 12 animation films. And there are several international premieres and all 80 films in competition are for the first time to be seen in Germany!

All right, duty done, statistics and ambition/rules of the game mentioned, yes I know that it is a competitive environment for a big festival like DOKLeipzig – what is more important is the content, the films that the festival has chosen and there is indeed a clear profile this year: Laura Poitras film on Snowden opens the festival, there are several films from and about Ukraine, there are Syrian filmmakers in the programme, films from South America, Asia, from Arab countries and Africa. The world is at its worst, documentaries are describing the situation, that’s how it should be, DOKLeipzig lives up to its reputation and tradition. In the officlal programme 198 films are being shown, in the “Sonderreihen” another 170 are listed, we have mentioned the retrospective of Jon Bang Carlsen as just one of them. He is one of very few Nordic documentarians to visit Leipzig, from the Baltic countries there are no documentaries. Seems like the Nordic go to cph:dox and idfa, the Baltics to Visions du Réel.

I have booked myself in to 5 full days in Leipzig during the festival, lot of watching, meeting people and saying goodbye to Claas Danielsen (photo), who stops as festival director with this edition. Some title-dropping from the feature length documentary competition: Sergei Loznitsa with “Maidan”, Ulrich Seidl with “Im Keller”, the French Bories and Chagnard who made the fine “The Arrivals” (winner in Leipzig in 2012) is back with “Rules of the Game”, Fernand Melgar who was in Leipzig in 2011 with “Vol Spécial” is there with “The Shelter” and Alexander Nanau (“The world According to Ion B.”) presents his “Toto and his Sisters”.

By clicking at the bottom of the link below you can get a pdf of the official programme of the festival.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/festival/festival-news?start:int=0 

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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