DOK Leipzig is pleased to welcome three new colleagues to the festival team who will contribute varied perspectives to the festival work. Victoria Leshchenko (Coordinator Documentary Film Competitions) and Jana Kraft (Coordinator Animated Film Competitions) are joining the programme department effective immediately. At DOK Industry, Guevara Namer will oversee the DOK Co-Pro Market and the DOK Short n’ Sweet short film pitch as project coordinator.
Victoria Leshchenko is a producer of cultural events and a curator who lives in Berlin and Kyiv. In 2010, following a stint at the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, she became the programme coordinator at the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, which DOK Leipzig partnered with last year. Since 2019, she has served as programme director at Docudays UA, curating numerous sections of that festival. In 2022, she and Yuliia Kovalenko founded the sloïk film atelier, an independent union of Ukrainian film curators which gives space to underrepresented voices and promotes them internationally.
Jana Kraft is working towards a degree in cultural studies and aesthetic communication at the University of Hildesheim. She lives in Leipzig. As part of her studies, she has been involved in the making of various cartoon and stop-motion films. She has also worked in film coordination at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Kurzsuechtig Central German Short Film Festival.
Guevara Namer is a documentary filmmaker and visual artist based in Berlin. She started her career in Damascus in 2007. Her work deals with themes of feminism, identity and exile. Guevara Namer is a German Film Academy winner (Lola 2022 for “The Other Side of the River”), in her filmography she has held various roles in a number of collaborations with international filmmakers, including co-directing, researching, filming, and producing.
At the same time, DOK Leipzig is bidding farewell to programme coordinators Thérèse Antony (formerly Competitions) and Ulrike Schmidt (formerly DOK Co-Pro Market, DOK Short n’ Sweet), who are moving on to other endeavours. The festival team wishes them all the best.
