Strong documentaries at the Dok Leipzig 2024 festival

This is exactly the moment when you realize the power of documentary film. In showing what’s happening beyond deep fakes and AI memes, in the real world. Daniel Abma’s portrait of a youth welfare group in Brandenburg, “In Principle Family,” has just celebrated its premiere in the German competition of the Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. The packed hall is already cheering on the completely normal, embarrassedly smiling protagonists.

Namely, the educators Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, who, together with a colleague, are observed in their daily work caring for the disturbed boys, who find a more stable home in the shared apartment than they previously had with their parents.

“You do such a great job, I have deep respect,” explains the director in front of his anti-heroic heroes. Abma, an enthusiastic Dutchman, makes no secret of the intention of his empowerment film: to show society the otherwise invisible work of youth welfare, which is certainly “systemically relevant”.

The main thing is people. This is a classic attitude, implemented in a much more distant way in the blessed days of direct cinema, which has a permanent place at Dok Leipzig, the festival that has been particularly committed to human rights around the world since its founding.

It’s just that for many filmmakers, in the face of multiple world crises and floods of digital images, empathy is increasingly more important than the objectivity invoked by predecessors like Klaus Wildenhahn, which is naturally less emotional.

In the politically based documentaries “Moria Six”, about the conviction of six young people for the fire in the Moria refugee camp, and “Valentina and the MUOSters”, which tells of the emancipation of a young Sicilian woman in the neighborhood of a US military base that is being attacked by the population It’s clear from the start that it’s about defense and prosecution.

As far as resources are concerned, no artistic renewal of the guild can be seen in the 67th edition of Dok Leipzig, whose full performances indicate great interest, especially among a young audience. In view of the wide range of everyday observations, interviews, archive material or landscape and architectural photography as well as reenactments, scenic fictions and animations, this may not even be necessary.

Only the technical quality of the virtual reality works shown in the Dok Neuland future section can still be greatly improved. Not to mention the tricky VR glasses.

“Flowers of Ukraine” shows a resistant Kiev woman

209 films from 55 countries competed in the four main competitions for the Leipzig pigeons. And many of the people portrayed here deserve human rights and courage awards, which Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, who appear completely unimpressed by the festival tumult, will never receive.

Nevertheless, wars and disasters are given a face through people like 67-year-old Kiev woman Natalia. With a sunny disposition and a green thumb, in Adelina Boret’s film portrait “Flowers of Ukraine” she stands up against the investors who want to demolish her house and garden on the edge of a high-rise development, as well as against the Russian attackers.

Anna Friedrich portrays an equally indestructible character in “Lights of the Street”, the second audience favorite in the German competition alongside “In Principle Family”. Friedrich shows people who live nomadically in Germany – a wagon park resident, members of the Yenische, a German minority with their own language who traditionally provide market supplies, and Magdalena, a farmer who has been living on the Walz for four years.

Natalia owns a dilapidated house and her garden, Magdalene owns her bundle and keeps two dogs – and both of their laughs reveal: They know the secret of a good life.

The fact that festival director Christof Terhechte chose the new work by Thomas Riedelsheimer, known as a meditative cinema esthete since the artist portrait “Rivers and Tides – Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time” from 2000, as the opening film is quite astonishing. Doesn’t humanity have other things to worry about than dealing with the physical nature and artistic fascination of light in “Tracing Light”, which is again accompanied by Fred Frith’s sound tinkering?

Aesthetic images, this is also a documentary film

In the interview, Terhechte defends the decision as one that consciously defends the subtle, aesthetic quality of documentaries. “Tracing Light” shows physicists and artists researching light. Terhechte calls it “eminently political, just different from what is usually called a ‘political film’.”

When it comes to the Middle East conflict, Terhechte, who led the Berlinale Forum from 2001 to 2018, wisely decided against films made after October 7th. “They would have been knitted with hot needles and thoughtlessly,” he says. Unlike “There Was Nothing Here Before” and “I Shall Not Hate,” which are in the audience competition and were both filmed before the Hamas attack on Israel.

injustice that is happening to Palestinians

When it comes to the content of fairness, both documentaries – despite their gesture of reconciliation – document the injustice that Israelis do to Palestinians. The former deals with the Israeli settler movement, the latter is a moving portrait of the doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish, who now lives in Canada.

Abuelaish, a well-known media figure, worked as a Palestinian doctor in Israel and lost three of his daughters in an Israeli attack. Nevertheless, the doctor continues to work as an activist for peace and is supported by Israeli friends. A heroic story calling for reconciliation, in which the Israeli state and its army look bad.

Films about the New Right only benefit her

As a festival that was founded during the GDR era, Dok Leipzig is always dedicated to historical filmmaking, documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe and post-Soviet narratives. There are only no films about the New Right, which one would expect given the AfD’s performance in the Saxon state elections.

The selection of festival contributions depends on the 3,350 submissions, says Christoph Terhechte. It was certainly possible to show films on the topic. “But I have yet to see a film about the New Right that didn’t help the New Right more than its opponents.” There’s something to that. In 2018, under his predecessor Leena Pasanen, the film “Lord of the Toys” promptly caused a scandal over a YouTube clique that made right-wing extremist slogans without comment.

In view of apocalyptic scenarios, such as those described in the documentaries about the destruction of nature, among which the Colombian entry “Morichales” in the international competition documents the activities of gold diggers in the Venezuelan rainforest with rumbling music but (almost) without atmosphere or original sound, it is downright Relieving that there are portraits of good people and explorations of physical phenomena.

Or a differentiated long-term study like “Sonnenstadt”, for which DFFB graduate Kristina Shtubert has repeatedly traveled to the Siberian taiga since 2013, where the religious community of the now imprisoned preacher Vissarion has settled. Of the 40 protagonists she spoke to in nine years, only four made it into the film, as she explains in the cinema. This is how impressive care looks when dealing with images and stories.