Film Archive

Jahr

Filmstill Blue

Blue

Jestem błękitem
Weronika Szyma
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Animated Film
Poland
2023
7 minutes
Polish
Subtitles: 
English

The sea on whose shore Weronika Szyma has set her film is a dense, pulsating blue. The beach and the family who are staying there, meanwhile, are limited to delicate black and white line drawings. Their minimalism makes the blue stand out all the more enchantingly: Sometimes represented as a horizontal strip that promises freedom but also fuels insecurity. Sometimes sloshing diagonally across the screen, swallowing up the image completely for a brief moment and marking a caesura. And there are quite a number of caesuras, because the seven film minutes span the story of several generations.

At one point the father disappears and the mother and her almost grown-up daughter are left to fend for themselves. They learn to comprehend the loss, support each other, turn gestures of distance into gestures of affection. Until the confidence grows to start all over again. The only thing that does not change here is the blue of the sea.

Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Weronika Szyma
Script
Weronika Szyma
Editor
Filip Dziuba
Producer
Piotr Furmankiewicz, Mateusz Michalak
Co-Producer
Weronika Szyma
Sound
Tomasz Sierpiński
Animation
Weronika Szyma
Filmstill Photophobia

Photophobia

Photophobia
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Slovakia,
Czech Republic,
Ukraine
2023
71 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

12-year-old Nikita and his family have been staying in an underground station in Kharkiv for weeks. The place promises protection from Russian attacks, but there is not much distraction down here. The glaring lights and provisionally furnished carriages create a surreal to dreary atmosphere, pets roam the aisles, an aging musician plays songs on his guitar.

Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík condense the first months of the war in Ukraine into an oppressive but not hopeless narrative, because the station is also a place of encounters. Niki soon meets Vika, who is his age and who coaxes the lethargic boy out of his shell. Together they roam the underworld, but while Vika is permitted to go to the surface at least once in a while, Niki’s radius of movement ends at the stairs on which sunlight falls occasionally. And yet an outside exists which the two directors make visible by Super 8 shots scattered in between. They show a damaged Kharkiv: destroyed vehicles, a charred bed, provisionally protected monuments. “Photophobia” is a hybrid, introspective film that manages to find something like tender romance in an unreal situation.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Script
Marek Leščák, Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Cinematographer
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Editor
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík, Martin Piga
Producer
Ivan Ostrochovský, Albert Malinovský, Katarína Tomková, Tomáš Michálek, Kristýna Michálek Květová
Co-Producer
Helena Osvaldová, Denis Ivanov, Jakub Mahler, Pavol Pekarčík
Sound
Dušan Kozák, Jakub Jurásek
Sound Design
Jakub Jurásek
Score
Roman Kurhan, Michal Novinski
World Sales
Michaela Čajková
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize, Leipziger Ring
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Filmstill Self-Portrait Along the Borderline
Self-Portrait Along the Borderline
Anna Dziapshipa
Abkhazia, a place of memory and at the same time a blind spot for the director. Almost impossible to enter from Georgia, she chooses an associative and personal approach to the split-off territory.
Filmstill Self-Portrait Along the Borderline

Self-Portrait Along the Borderline

Avtoportreti zghvarze
Anna Dziapshipa
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Georgia
2023
50 minutes
Georgian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

Parts of the house director Anna Dziapshipa traces in her autobiographical roamings through the past look like straight out of a horror film: cobwebbed, dark, derelict. It is located in Abkhazia, the region officially off-limits to Georgians, protected by Russia and not recognised as an autonomous republic by the international community.

One half of Dziapshipa’s family comes from here, including a football player who once was a key player for Dinamo Tbilisi. The filmmaker edits footage of his sports activities into “Self-Portrait Along the Borderline,” but also shows the splendour of the former Soviet holiday paradise. It is a personal, associative approach in which Dziapshipa analyses and reflects on her own experiences as a child with both Georgian and Abkhazian family backgrounds. Discrimination plays a role, as do solemn and disturbing things. Time and again, spiders crawl through the frame, weaving their webs and thus connections.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Anna Dziapshipa
Cinematographer
Anna Dziapshipa
Editor
Eka Tsotsoria
Producer
Anna Dziapshipa
Co-Producer
Niko Mikadze
Sound
Anna Dziapshipa
Sound Design
Paata Godziashvili
Score
Nika Paniashvili
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Smoke of the Fire

Smoke of the Fire

O fumo do fogo
Daryna Mamaisur
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Ukraine,
Belgium,
Hungary
2023
22 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal),
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Learning a foreign language is like creating another self. How can you speak it without losing your own sound, without dissolving completely in it – and still be heard and noticed? This film is a charming and intellectually fastidious attempt to navigate the complexities of language, identity and trauma.

To do this, the filmmaker resorts to her own biography. Because Russia invaded Ukraine when Daryna Mamaisur, who comes from Kyiv, was in Portugal for a Doc Nomads graduate course. Home and the search for it became the defining factors of this work, as well as the traumatic situation of only being able to “witness” the difficult situation from a distance. She, the Ukrainian in Portugal, learns Portuguese. She lets the new words for “war,” “explosion” and “attack” roll off her tongue. She compares them with the soft, intimate sound of her native language, with the sound of Kyiv. Friends send audio and visual recordings from Ukraine which, combined with animations, become a multilayered essay and finally a testimony – for the resilience of language and culture, no matter where they are spoken and lived, and not least for the power of the artistic documentary, which can make speech and sound possible.

Victoria Leshchenko

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Daryna Mamaisur
Cinematographer
Shaheen Ahmed, Daryna Mamaisur, Svitlana Vostrikova
Editor
Daryna Mamaisur
Producer
Frederik Nicolai, Daryna Mamaisur
Sound
Ghada Fikri, Juliette Menthonnex, Tetiana Usova
Sound Design
Anna Khvyl
World Sales
Valentina Zalevska
Filmstill The Box

The Box

Škatla
Tomaž Pavkovič
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Slovenia
2023
22 minutes
Croatian
Subtitles: 
English

Tomaž Pavkovič finds reams of film material in a box that tells not only the story of his family but of a whole country: His father’s life ran almost parallel to the development of Yugoslavia, which permeates each of his recordings. The parades in the countryside, later the move to the city and life as a working-class family, in between always President Tito, even if only as a tattoo on a diver’s chest. The sons are left with the abstract memory of a state that has ceased to exist, that is itself a box. Do the images you find in the box tell you something about yourself, too?

The essayistic off-text by the Croatian poet Marko Pogačar, written in close collaboration with the director, frequently describes scenes that are shown at an entirely different point in the film – gaps yawn between the representation and one’s memory that can only be approached by circling them. To do this, not the least tools the film uses are an idiosyncratic, driving selection of music and a good dose of dry humour.

Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tomaž Pavkovič
Script
Marko Pogačar, Tomaž Pavkovič
Cinematographer
Franci Pavkovič
Editor
Tomaž Pavkovič
Producer
Tomaž Pavkovič
Sound Design
Rok Kovač
Narrator
Marko Pogačar
Filmstill The Last Relic

The Last Relic

Viimane reliikvia
Marianna Kaat
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Estonia,
Norway
2023
104 minutes
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

In the passing busses and trams, people look out of the windows in disbelief. The reverse shot shows a crowd of protesters. Two dozen people perhaps, some holding signs, one shouting “Putin behind bars!” It is a symbolic image of the pathetic state of the Russian opposition. The year is 2017, the war of aggression against Ukraine is still to come. Over a period of several years, “The Last Relic” portrays people from different opposition groups: a student from the Marxist-Leninist “Left Block,” a teacher with sympathies for Navalny; a digger driver demands the redistribution of resources. These activists lack support, but not courage. One of them has just been released from prison and survived a hunger strike. The others must expect to be prosecuted at any moment.

The setting of this film is the Ural metropolis of Yekaterinburg. The bulk of the population, an insert announces, dreams of a “return to imperial glory.” Estonian director Marianna Kaat, born in 1965, has spent a considerable part of her life in the Soviet empire. She shows the majority society as a uniform crowd at military parades, contrasting it with the individuals of the opposition. Few films offer such insights into the latter’s continuing precarious situation.

Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Marianna Kaat
Script
Marianna Kaat
Cinematographer
Kacper Czubak
Editor
Jesper Osmund
Producer
Marianna Kaat
Co-Producer
Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas, Tobin Auber
Sound
Boris Frolov
Sound Design
Israel Banuelos
Score
Lauri-Dag Tüür
World Sales
Anja Dziersk
Winner of: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Valerija

Valerija

Valerija
Sara Jurinčić
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Croatia
2023
15 minutes
Croatian
Subtitles: 
English

Two women take the ferry to an island cemetery to tend to a gravesite. With the utmost care and perseverance, they remove moss and candle wax from the stone, wash and scrub every chink, trim flower arrangements and set up lights that flash in different colours at night.

It is a work of mourning under special circumstances, as Sara Jurinčić makes plain in an early shot: She edits two picture galleries next to each other, one of male, the other of female portraits. The men suddenly vanish from their photos and thus from the island. The faces of the women remain. And it is these portraits, motifs chosen by themselves for their gravestones, that dominate the film, give a face to its experimental explorations of female genealogy. Jurinčić wraps them in visual metaphors of extraordinary intricacy, sometimes literally as in the spectacular finale, when the portraits of the dead women are superimposed on the faces of the living women – with an eerie effect that is as disturbing as it is sublime.

Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Sara Jurinčić
Cinematographer
Ivan Slipčević
Producer
Vanja Jambolic
World Sales
Marcella Jelić
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Filmstill Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus
Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus
Juliane Tutein
The political climate in Belarus is growing more restrictive every day, activists are constantly facing imprisonment. This film is dedicated to three courageous rebels.
Filmstill Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus

Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus

Wer, wenn nicht wir? Der Kampf für Demokratie in Belarus
Juliane Tutein
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
77 minutes
Belarusian,
Russian,
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

In 2020, the biggest protests against the government to date formed in Belarus. The protesters were met with violence and restrictions, many of them were given draconian prison sentences. A dangerous climate that sought to nip political activism in the bud took hold. For “Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus,” Juliane Tutein filmed and researched for three years in a country that had not seen a change of elites with its supposed independence in 1991. She discovered mainly women at the forefront of the courageous protesters. This portrait is dedicated to three of them: Nina Baginskaya, in her mid-seventies and active in the fight for an open Belarus since the 1980s, Tatsyana “Tanya” Hatsura-Yavorskaya, founder of the human rights film festival “Watch Docs”, and Darya Rublevskaya, the youngest at 22, who works for the “Viasna” human rights centre founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski. Tutein develops a polyphonic collage in which Minsk’s intimidating architecture has the same haunting impact as Hatsura-Yavorskaya’s escape into a Ukraine attacked by Russia.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Juliane Tutein
Script
Juliane Tutein
Cinematographer
Siarhei Kavaliou, Feline Gerhardt, Juliane Tutein
Editor
Maria Hemmleb
Producer
Ümit Uludağ, Martin Roelly, Erik Winker
Sound
Cécilia Marchat, Sirius Kestel, Juliane Tutein
Sound Design
Andreas Mühlschlegel
Score
Julian Erhardt, Mirko Büchele
Animation
Georg Krefeld
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, Leipziger Ring