Their Own Republic by Russian director Aliona Polunina caused quite a fury at this year‘s Doclisboa due to its pro-Russian stance. The documentary nonetheless offers an interesting insight into the side of the Ukrainian conflict rarely portrayed in western media.
ENVIRONMENT: Peter Mettler is known for his intuitive and experimental film making. The new film Becoming Animal has also an ecological and philosophical depth, as it involves the Canadian philosopher David Abram.
The Border Fence draws out the anxieties and fears of a community in the grip of a shifting political landscape, provoking unavoidable parallels with an increasingly divisive Europe.
IDFA: Helena Trestikova’s work epitomises the innovative role of long-term filmmaking, and the inextricable link between big and little histories.
CLIMATE CHANGE: If you are prone to dismiss warnings about environmental destruction as exaggerations, you might as well stop reading right away.
AFRICA: Political resistance in Africa is led by the middle-class, while the poor gather in the streets.
RUSSIA: Meeting Gorbachev is an intimate and engaging portrait of the man who unwittingly prompted the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Through the Revision section of this year’s edition of Dok Leipzig, the festival takes a retrospective glance at past documentaries that are still potent today.
The archival footage from a court action against leading scientists in the Soviet Union of 1930 has been reconfigured into a narrative drama, which leads today‘s audience to believe the opposite of contemporary spectators.
Two Italian women look back at a decade of representative politics fighting for women’s rights in the (post) Berlusconi era. Amused, dispirited, annoyed, and anguished they assess how much – or how little – they managed to change.
Filmmaker Guy-Marc Hinant attempts to reclaim the good name of his hometown by uncovering lost stories long hidden within the slag heaps of the city’s memory.
An intriguing portrait of a war reporter that died under murky circumstances during the 90s in wartime Yugoslavia, after trading in his pen for a more active role in the bloody conflict.