This year, several programmes at DOK Leipzig are once again focusing on central and eastern European film, which have a strong historical connection to the festival.

DOK Leipzig is giving central and eastern European film a platform in a section titled “Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe”. Many of the films in this section reflect Russia’s influence and the threat of Russian imperialism. The short and feature-length films that are being shown include works from Estonia, Georgia, Croatia, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic, with several world premieres among them. The section includes a portrayal of the courageous and undaunted activists in Belarus (“Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus”) as well of as the opposition to Putin’s regime in Russia prior to the invasion of Ukraine (“The Last Relic”). The backdrop of Tito-era Yugoslavia drives the narrative in a philosophical retrospective (“The Box”) and in Kharkiv, a 12-year-old who experiences the nightmare of wartime from an underground station struggles to find the miracle of hope (“Photophobia”).

Slovenia, the Guest of Honour at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, will be featured in a festival compilation titled “Focus: Post-1991 Slovenian Documentary Films”, which will screen outstanding films made in various years. This programme was developed in cooperation with the Slovenian Cultural Centre and the Slovenian Film Centre and is curated by Simon Popek, programme manager of the Ljubljana International Film Festival.

The short film event “5x5 Shorts from the East” is being presented by DOK Leipzig in cooperation with the European partners Kraków Film Foundation, Czech Film Fund, Slovak Film Institute, Estonian Film Institute and Croatian Audiovisual Centre. These 25 documentary and animated films will be screened free of charge at the Polish Institute on 14 October and can be attended on a “hop on, hop off” basis.

“Doc Alliance Award” will be screening three long and three short documentaries from a competition held by this festival network, to which DOK Leipzig and six other European documentary film festivals belong. Here, too, the focus will be on Central and Eastern Europe.

The film selection of the programmes presented here can be found in the PDF file (see above).