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German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them
The Wind Is Taking Them
Ann Carolin Renninger
The big bang, tardigrades, humanity as a dying breed: A child researcher on a farm by the Baltic Sea has some astonishing thoughts about these things – and his curiosity about the present is infectious.
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them
Filmstill The Wind Is Taking Them

The Wind Is Taking Them

Der Wind nimmt die mit
Ann Carolin Renninger
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
25 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

It is a stroke of luck when a film manages to simply observe the flow of life and almost casually show us the miracles found in life’s corners. Ann Carolin Renninger approaches people and things with great serenity and a palpable joy of searching for and finding images.

Rovin lives on a remote farm on the Baltic Sea and explores his surroundings with insatiable curiosity. He is interested in the universe, planets, unknown creatures – and in tardigrades, those tiny multicellular organisms that look like dust bags on legs and are real survival artists. Quite unlike humans, as Rovin points out, because the latter are sure to die out one day. He sees this as a logical fact, not a threat. And when you open yourself up to the grainy, earthy images and the calm narrative, you eventually stop wondering, too, why that should be a problem. After all, as long as the wind blows through the trees and scatters the tardigrades, everything is in good order. In addition to the captivatingly alert boy, Renninger meets Marie, who knows everything about rocks, and Christopher, who decorates a place with these rocks. They are all on a quest and every day find a piece of what one cannot hold onto: the present.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ann Carolin Renninger
Cinematographer
Ann Carolin Renninger, René Frölke
Editor
Ann Carolin Renninger
Producer
Ann Carolin Renninger
-
Zane Zlemesa, Miro Denck
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill The Children of Korntal
The Children of Korntal
Julia Charakter
A sensitive examination of an abuse scandal in an evangelical children’s home in Baden-Württemberg. Victims’ testimonies are confronted with the shameful relativisations of the church.
Filmstill The Children of Korntal

The Children of Korntal

Die Kinder aus Korntal
Julia Charakter
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
90 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
English

In Korntal, a small town of 9,000 souls in Baden-Württemberg, hundreds of children were abused in the homes of the Evangelical Brethren since the 1950s. Forced labour, physical punishment and sexualised violence were the order of the day. To date, more than 150 former children have broken their silence, more than 80 perpetrators have been identified. Because the latter covered for each other and the neighbours looked away, the children were defenceless against the abuse for decades. When the scandal was exposed in 2013, the community and the village were hostile at first: That which must not be cannot be. It was only when the pressure from the outside grew that the community initiated a process of dealing with the scandal. But it is controversial: victims are re-traumatised, their statements doubted. To this day the children from Korntal are fighting for investigation and compensation.

The film focuses on the victims and avoids all dramatisation. What happened was dramatic enough, after all. When testimonies are only played as audio-recordings to protect the speakers, a simple animation fills the visual gaps. When those responsible today speak, the camera stays restrained and does not judge. That is not necessary anyway, because the inconceivable relativisation of the crimes speaks loudly enough – in Korntal as elsewhere.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Julia Charakter
Script
Julia Charakter
Cinematographer
Jonas Eckert
Editor
Jonas Eckert, Julia Charakter
Producer
Birgit Schulz
Sound Design
Volker Ambruster
Score
Leonard Küßner
Animation
Mick Mahler
Broadcaster
ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel, GeoTelevision
Funder
Film- und Medienstiftung NRW GmbH
Winner of: DEFA Sponsoring Prize
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Filmstill The Gate
The Gate
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
How does the omnipresence of war affect life? The film looks for answers in the “American Way” of everyday life in the vast deserts of Utah, where the U.S. Army are testing new weapons systems.
Filmstill The Gate

The Gate

The Gate
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
88 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
German

The top-secret military testing facility Dugway lies in the barren desert of Utah. This is where the U.S. Army are rehearsing the wars of tomorrow. They specialise in nuclear weapons, chemical and biological agents, including anthrax and special nerve toxins. Even the Hiroshima pilots practiced on this site. Meeting at this war site far from all combat zones are: a heavily traumatised soldier, a military chaplain, a survivor of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and a father looking for his missing son. They are all proud of their American Way of Life and at the same time marked by the horrors of war. Because even in Utah, far from all actual fighting, it has indelibly inscribed itself – into the people’s souls and the collective memory of the U.S., for many decades the nation with the highest military budget.

This visually powerful film approaches its protagonists without prejudice, trying to learn how they navigate a social system that sees the use of violence as a right of freedom. What does it mean when guns and their attendant rituals are used to strengthen family cohesion, when shooting practice becomes a bonding exercise between fathers and sons? And when – unimpressed by the daily arms buildup – fear hovers over everything and seeps deeper into life every day?

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
Script
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
Cinematographer
Claire Pijman
Editor
Claire Pijman
Producer
Heino Deckert
Co-Producer
Jasmin Herold, Michael David Beamish
Sound
Michael David Beamish
Sound Design
Michael Kaczmarek, Adrian Lo
Score
Markus Aust
World Sales
Liselot Verbrugge
German Distributor
Michael Höfner
Nominated for: VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, DEFA Sponsoring Prize
Filmstill Togoland Projections

Togoland Projections

Togoland Projektionen
Jürgen Ellinghaus
German Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
France,
Germany,
Togo
2023
96 minutes
French,
German,
English,
Ife,
Tem,
Anufo,
Bassar,
Kabiyé,
Dagbani,
American Sign Language,
Konkomba
Subtitles: 
German, English

Following in the footsteps of the Hamburg film director Hans Schomburgk who travelled through the German colony of Togo from Lomé to the north with his companion and actress Meg Gehrts in 1913, Jürgen Ellinghaus screens the footage shot then at its locations in modern-day Togo. Schomburgk’s affirmative images show slave labour, humiliation and the arrogance of the colonial power. The material is contrasted by Gehrts’ romanticising diary entries and other colonial reports which often testify to a horrifying coldness.

The screenings of this material, which has never been shown in Togo before, prompt the audiences to reflect on tradition, stereotypes, the “white gaze.” In the villages, the colonial images conjure up memories of handed down stories. In the metropolis of Lomé, young film enthusiasts deplore that these images were kept from them until today and discuss in which contexts they should be screened. But “Togoland Projections” not only shows how much these painful documents and texts are needed in contemporary Togo, because they are part of the country’s history. The film also demonstrates that they are needed in Germany so we can take responsibility for our suppressed history and face our own racism – past and present.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Jürgen Ellinghaus
Script
Jürgen Ellinghaus
Cinematographer
Rémi Jennequin
Editor
Nina Khada
Producer
Frédéric Féraud
Co-Producer
Peter Roloff, Madjé Ayité
Sound
Caled Boukari
Sound Design
Anders Wasserfall
World Sales
Stephan Riguet
Commissioning Editor
Rolf Bergmann
Funder
nordmedia Film- und Mediengesellschaft mbH Niedersachsen/Bremen, Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée
Narrator
Jürgen Ellinghaus
Nominated for: Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, Leipziger Ring, VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness