It’s awards time for the first winners at the 66^th edition of DOK Leipzig! The nine awards of our festival’s partners have been presented on 14 October 2023 at Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig’s westend. Almost all filmmakers received their awards in person. The winners of the Golden and Silver Doves will be announced at a second event this evening.

These films have been awarded:

DEFA Sponsoring Prize (4,000 €):
Julia Charakter for “The Children of Korntal” (Germany)

MDR Film Prize (3,000 €):
Marianna Kaat for “The Last Relic” (Estonia, Norway)

Film Prize Leipziger Ring (2,500 €): 
This year’s award went ex aequo to:
Jonathan Schörnig for “One Hundred Four” (Germany) and 
Nantenaina Lova for “Where Zebus Speak French” (France, Madagascar, Germany, Burkina Faso)

Prize of the Interreligious Jury (2,250 €):
Sarah Mallégol for “Kumva – Which Comes from Silence” (France)

Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize (2,000 €):
Jonathan Schörnig for “One Hundred Four” (Germany)

ver.di-Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness (1,500 €):
Jonathan Schörnig for “One Hundred Four” (Germany)

Prize of the International Film Critics (FIPRESCI Prize): 
Taewoong Won for “Universe Department Store” (South Korea)

mephisto 97.6 Award:
Zhang Xu Zhan for “Compound Eyes of Tropical“ (Taiwan)

Gedanken Aufschluss
awarded by a jury of prisoners of the Juvenile Detention Centre Regis-Breitingen:
Nele Dehnenkamp for “For the Time Being” (Germany)

Congratulations to all the filmmakers! 

For more information about the juries and all awards presented at DOK Leipzig 2023, head to our awards page.

The ceremony for the festival awards – the Golden and Silver Doves – was held on 14 October with a live audience at Leipzig’s Schaubühne Lindenfels. We congratulate all winners!

International Competition Documentary Film

The Golden Dove Feature-Length Film in the International Competition went to Peter Mettler, our 2023 Homage guest, for “While the Green Grass Grows”. The 10,000-euro Golden Dove is sponsored by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.

The Silver Dove for the best feature-length documentary by an up-and-coming director, was awarded to Hovhannes Ishkhanyan for the Armenian-French production “Beauty and the Lawyer”. The 6,000 euro award is sponsored by 3sat.

The Golden Dove Short Film, endowed with 3,000 euros, went to Bo Wang for “An Asian Ghost Story” (Netherlands, Hong Kong).

The Silver Dove Short Film, which includes 1,500 euros for the best short documentary by an up-and-coming director, sponsored by the Sächsische Landesanstalt für privaten Rundfunk und neue Medien (Saxon State Institute for Private Broadcasting and New Media, SLM), went to “30 Kilometres per Second” by Jani Peltonen (Finland).

International Competition Animated Film

In the International Competition Animated Film, the newly created Golden Dove Feature-Length Film, endowed with 3,000 euros, went to Xu Jingwei for “No Changes Have Taken in Our Life” (China), the story of a musician who tries in vain to find work after graduating from university.

The Golden Dove Short Film in conjunction with 1,500 euros, sponsored by the Deutsches Institut für Animationsfilm e. V., was awarded to Barbara Rupik for “Such Miracles Do Happen” (Poland). 

German Competition Documentary Film

The Golden Dove Feature-Length Film in the German Competition went to “One Hundred Four” by Jonathan Schörnig, a real-time documentation of a rescue at sea on the Mediterranean. This 10,000-euro award is donated by Doris Apell-Kölmel and Michael Kölmel.

The Golden Dove Short Film, in conjunction with 1,500 euros, was awarded to Franzis Kabisch for “getty abortions” (Germany, Austria).

Audience Competition

This year’s winner of the Golden Dove in the Audience Competition is selected by the jury members Billie Bauermeister, Fritz Czaplinski, Anna Eulitz, Charlotte Hennrich and Annegret Weiß. They honoured Asmae El Moudir for her documentary film “The Mother of All Lies” (Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar). The Audience Award is endowed with 3,000 euros, granted pro rata by Leipziger Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Filmkunst e. V..

See all winners, awards and read more about the juries here.

On festival Sunday, we will show the most wanted films of this year’s programme once again. Curious which films made the cut? For the first time, we also have a Kids DOK programme for children among our DOK Busters:

• 11:30, Passage Kinos Astoria: Kids DOK – Films for All 4+
• 14:30, Passage Kinos Astoria: „Kumva – Which Comes from Silence“
• 14:30, CineStar 2: „It’s Just a Whole” and „Sick Girls“
• 17:30, CineStar 2: Short Film Reel „ABC Love“

You can now buy tickets via the links above or at our box offices in the festival cinemas. 

With the world premiere of the documentary film “White Angel – The End of Marinka” by Arndt Ginzel, our festival was opened on Sunday, 8 October at the CineStar theatre. This film documents evacuation and rescue operations in the small Ukrainian town of Marinka in the Donetsk region between the spring and autumn of 2022.

In his welcoming remarks, our festival director Christoph Terhechte emphasised the social and political relevance of the films that the festival is screening: “Not only is the war being waged against Ukraine a theme in several of the films in this year’s programme. Many of them also generally address the relationship between Russia and the now independent states that were once within the Soviet sphere of influence. The retrospective ‘Film and Protest: Popular Uprisings in the Cold War’ provides the historical perspective on this.”

Dr Skadi Jennicke, the City of Leipzig’s Deputy Mayor for Arts and Culture, emphasised the importance of DOK Leipzig in a time of uncertainty and the struggle for truth: “A clear commitment to facts, to the strength of the argument and to a critical debate that does not shy away from dissent. Defending these values also means defending our democracy. DOK Leipzig is a good venue for this. For the City of Leipzig, the festival is an indispensable highlight of the arts scene and an ambassador for Leipzig.”

Saxon Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Barbara Klepsch, who was unable to attend the opening, also expressed support for DOK Leipzig in her remarks: “The opening of the DOK festival begins a week-long international dialogue between representatives of the film industry and the audience, turning the eyes of the entire world to Leipzig and Saxony. The films that have been selected are not only entertaining; they also draw from current political discussions and take a critical look at the world in which we live.”

Markus Franke, head of the ministry’s arts division at the Saxon Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism announced the recipient of the Saxon Award for the Best Documentary Project by a Female Director, which is endowed with 5,000 euros.  The award went to the Belarusian filmmaker Daria Yurkevich for her project titled “GENESIS”. This film will portray a married couple who run a horse-farming collective and are doing everything they can to save the last remaining breed of Belarusian horses from extinction and release them into the wild.

We are screening 225 films and extended reality works from around 60 countries, including 44 world premieres, in eleven different venues until Sunday (15 October). From 9 to 15 October, one film per day will be available online for 24 hours throughout Germany in the DOK Stream.

“White Angel – The End of Marinka” will be in cinemas across Germany from 19 October.

Browse the Festival Programme