DOK Leipzig is proud to announce the first films to be officially selected for the festival. Feature-length films submitted to the Camera Lucida and Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe sections do not compete for the Golden and Silver Doves, but may be nominated for partnership awards.

“Camera Lucida” is a collection of documentaries that feature bold artistic styles of the kind that film aficionados in particular appreciate. The five films in the programme this year deal with the sixth great mass extinction (“Just Above the Surface of the Earth”), explore rock formations as a metaphor for grieving (“Lapilli”), and take us to an Argentinian zoo (“Collective Monologue”), a trailer park next to Berlin’s Ostkreuz station (“The Garden Cadences”) and a salt lake in the United States that was once an nuclear testing ground (“Among the Palms the Bomb, or: Looking for Reflections in the Toxic Field of Plenty”).

DOK Leipzig’s “Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe” section provides a platform for films from Central and Eastern Europe – a region with strong historical ties to the festival. The programme is comprised of works from Georgia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Poland and Croatia, and includes a world premiere (“A Year of Endless Days” by Renata Lučić).

The five documentaries in this section deal with such topics as the mass exodus of women from rural areas along the Croatian-Bosnian border (“A Year of Endless Days”), an attempt to reconcile family responsibilities with one’s own dreams (“The Other One”) and a reflection on strict parenting methods (“Ever Since I Knew Myself”). “wo/men” portrays “burrneshas”, women in the social roles of men in Albania, and “A Year in the Life of the Country” uses found footage to tell of Poland in the early 1980s, when it was caught between the Solidarność movement and the recent imposition of martial law.

Continuing with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe, DOK Industry presents a number of events and activities, brought about through collaboration with the festival’s valued partners. The second session of the 2024 Ex Oriente Film workshop, a three-module creative lab of the Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) supporting creative documentary features and docuseries from Central and Eastern Europe, will once again take place in partnership with DOK Leipzig on 26 - 30 October. 17 projects in development and early production will participate in the second session, receiving tailored guidance on honing the narrative and visual style of their projects, developing a robust financing and distribution strategy, and finding international co-producers and partners. The tutors joining the workshop are Iikka Vehkalahti, Filip Remunda, Diana El Jeiroudi, Christian Popp, Per K.Kirkegaard, Ruth Reid, Chris Westendorp, and Eleonora Savi, among others.
 
The programme of Ex Oriente Film x DOK Industry will also feature a slate of offerings that are also open to DOK Industry accredited guests, including masterclasses, case studies, and lectures covering diverse aspects of documentary filmmaking, production, and distribution. Addressing episodic storytelling in documentary series, writer and director Chris Westendorp (co-directed “Hidden” alongside Mea Dols de Jong) will give a hands-on lecture on script writing in series, while Fandango’s Eleonora Savi will discuss daunting aspects of producing documentary series. DOK Industry accredited guests will also have the opportunity to attend a masterclass by esteemed film editor Per K. Kirkegaard (“Accused”, “Chuck Norris vs. Communism”), who will delve into the artistic collaboration in the editing room. A masterclass on artistic language in documentary film and a special way of working as a director-cinematographer will be given by filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer (2024 DOK Leipzig’s Opening Film “Tracing Light”). Lastly, international sales agent Anna Berthollet of Lightdox will guide us through the current landscape of sales and distribution for creative documentaries.

Following last year’s success, DOK Leipzig will hold a showcase of six Generation Ukraine projects, with the participation of the film teams. The six projects are presently in the rough-cut stage and are nearing completion, looking for festival premieres and distribution. Generation Ukraine is an initiative of the ARTE Group and its European partners, which was rolled out in 2023 as part of a collective effort to champion uncompromising voices from Ukraine and support local documentary filmmakers and production structures by co-producing 12 documentaries that examine Ukrainian reality since the onset of the full-scale invasion. 

A number of completed films from the Generation Ukraine collection have already enjoyed success at major international film festivals. Olha Zhurba’s unflinching audiovisual diary of the effects of war “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” premiered at the Venice Film Festival to critical acclaim. Premiering at Berlinale Forum, Oksana Karpovych’s harrowing film “Intercepted” received two Special Mentions for the Ecumenical Jury Prize and the Amnesty International Film Award, further screening at more than 30 festivals.​ Svitlana Lishchynska’s intimately personal film “A Bit of a Stranger” (DOK Co-Pro Market 2022) celebrated its world premiere at Berlinale Panorama, while Roman Blazhan’s “The Basement” made its debut across the globe at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI). 

Film Lists:
Camera Lucida
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe

Overviews of the Projects: Ex Oriente Film and Generation Ukraine

Ex Oriente Film 2024: Features

• Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible | Director: Vanja Juranić | Production: Vanja Jambrović, Tibor Keser (Restart, Hungary)
• Blue Sweater With a Yellow Hole | Director: Tetiana Khodakivska | Production: Elena Saulich (Pronto Film, Ukraine)
• Cooperative | Director: Mikhail Volkov | Production: Roman Blazhan (Minimal Movie, Ukraine)
• Gone Guy | Director: Andrei Dăscălescu | Production: Ligia Ciornei (Filmlab, Romania)
• The Island of Freedom | Director: Haruna Honcoop | Production: Haruna Honcoop (Be Water My Friend, Czech Republic)
• My Father, the Iceman | Director: Łukasz Kowalski | Production: Anna Mazerant (4.30 Studio, Poland)
• Once We Were Heroes | Director: Oliwia Tonteri | Production: Aino Halonen (Kompot, Finland, Poland)
• Operation Champion | Director: Mariam Nikolaishvili | Production: Irina Gelashvili (Radium Films, Georgia)
• Parallel Polis 2.0 | Director: Martin Piga | Production: Tereza Tokárová (CinePunkt, Slovakia)
• Retrospective | Director: Gabrielė Urbonaitė | Production: Uljana Kim, Migla Butkute (Studio Uljana Kim, Lithuania)
• Slava  | Director: Soňa G. Lutherová | Production: Maroš Hečko, Peter Veverka (Azyl Production, Slovakia)
• Virtual Girlfriends | Director: Barbora Chalupová | Production: Pavla Klimešová (Helium Film, Czech Republic)

Ex Oriente Film 2024: Series

• Cradle To Grave | Director: Stanislav Donchev | Production: Teodora Doncheva (Bulgaria) 
• Forever Young | Director: Đuro Gavran | Production: Miljenka Čogelja (Pipser, Croatia)
• Frozen Ocean | Director: Viktória Dénes | Production: Julianna Ugrin (Éclipse Film, Hungary)
• Near Light | Director: Niccolò Salvato | Production: Mara Cracaleanu (Melancholia Pictures, Romania)
• One Inch Eastward | Director: Irina Maldea | Production: Brendan Culleton (Akajava Films, Ireland)

The Ex Oriente Film training programme is supported by Creative Europe MEDIA, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and the Czech Film Fund.
 

Overview of the six Generation Ukraine projects presented at DOK Leipzig 2024:

• Another Man's Diary | Director: Oleksandr Tkachenko | Production: Illia Gladshtein (Phalanstery Films, Ukraine) | Co-production: Antoine Goldet (Amok Films, France)
• The Blessed | Director: Andrii Lysetskyi | Production: Olha Beskhmelnytsina, Gennady Kofman (MaGiKa Film, Ukraine) | Co-Production: Uldis Cekulis (VFS Films, Latvia), Erik Winker (CORSO Film, Germany)
• Palingenesion (WT) | Directors: Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith, Simon Mozgovyi | Production: Eugene Rachkovsky (TABOR, Ukraine) | Co-Production: Ralph Wieser (Mischief Films, Austria)​, Nabil Bellahsene (Les Valseurs, France)
• Queens of Joy | Director: Olga Gibelinda | Production: Ivanna Khitsinska (Quatros Group, Ukraine) | Co-Production: Louis Beaudemont (Les Steppes Productions, France), Hana Blaha Šilarová (Films & Chips, Czech Republic)
• Silent Flood | Director: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk | Production: Karina Kostyna (TABOR, Ukraine) | Co-Production: Tanja Georgieva-Waldhauer (Elemag Pictures, Germany)
• Women Occupied | Directors: Tetiana Hanza, Zoia Volk | Production: Oksana Ivantsiv, Regina Maryanovska Davidzon (Real Pictures, Ukraine) | Co-Production: Zoia Volk (ZOVA Films, Germany)