Film Festival | DOK Leipzig 2025: A film with a bitter aftertaste

Making a (good) documentary film isn't exactly easy. But you don't have to travel far or venture into an unfamiliar social environment – ​​your own family provides plenty of material to explore. It's no surprise, then, that this year's DOK Leipzig (October 27 to November 2) once again featured many family films. Laura Coppens, for example, explored the biography of her grandfather in "Sediments," a doctor in East Germany who collaborated with the Stasi. Vincent Graf portrays his grandmother, who returned to her native Italy after decades of arduous guest work, in "Nonna."

In "A Scary Movie," Sergio Oksman takes his twelve-year-old son Nuno, who has just begun to develop an interest in horror films, to an abandoned Lisbon hotel. There, the two reenact scenes from Stanley Kubrick's classic "The Shining" (1980). This creates a humorous reflection on the horror genre. Oksman's film asks: Shouldn't we actually be looking for ghosts in the everyday? In "The Red Moon Eclipse," Caroline Guimbal cinematically interweaves the life of her terminally ill mother with her own pregnancy. A touching film with a bitter aftertaste: It suggests too strongly that the mother's illness stems from existential anxieties and experiences of violence within a patriarchal system.

Family themes were not the only focus that emerged from the festival's competition program. Another focus was formed by films dealing with animals, species extinction, and humanity's exploitation of nature. Nikolaus Geyrhalter, for example, traveled to various locations around the globe that are (still) covered in snow year-round for his film "Melt" and spoke with the people who live there.

Serge-Olivier Rondeau made a film, "The Inheritors," about one of the world's largest ring-billed gull colonies. And Terra Long captured daily life at an animal rescue center in Canada in his film "BAEA." The theme of species extinction even found its way into animation: Marcel Barelli's three-minute essay film "EX-tract," featuring ink-drawn animals, reminded viewers that humanity is remarkably forgetful. Will future generations, Barelli asks, even mourn extinct species if they have never encountered them firsthand?

For readers of "nd," in addition to the aforementioned film "Sediments," another film shown in the competition will likely be of particular interest: "White Smoke over Schwarze Pumpe" by Martin Gressmann. It presents footage from an older film shot by Peter Badel and Dieter Chill in 1990 and 1991, interspersed with more recent footage from 2019 to 2025, also by Gressmann and Badel. The film focuses on life in and around the small Lusatian town of Schwarze Pumpe, now part of the Brandenburg town of Spremberg. After the end of the GDR, the lignite mining industry here was dismantled, and tens of thousands lost their jobs. What happens next?

The old recordings feature many different people from the region. Some are desperate, some disillusioned and indifferent, others hopeful and pragmatic. Three decades later, some of them can provide insights into their experiences. And the more recent recordings show that the change of system has left its mark on the landscape and on people's minds.

DOK Leipzig's continued experimental spirit was evident this year in its first intensive collaboration with another film festival. As a tribute to the internationally touring festival "Punto y Raya," dedicated to abstract animation, films from its program were screened in Leipzig. Perhaps never before have so many psychedelic images graced Leipzig cinemas.

There have never been so many psychedelic images in Leipzig cinemas before.

Of course, such film series don't exactly belong to the culture industry that attracts the masses. The fact that they, and many other artistically ambitious films, can be shown publicly is also thanks to the DOK Film Festival's public funding. The majority of the budget comes from the Free State of Saxony and the city of Leipzig. But how secure is this funding in the future? This, among other things, was discussed by Christoph Terhechte and Ola Staszel during an open panel discussion last Thursday.

Journalist and film critic Terhechte is the outgoing director of the DOK Leipzig Film Festival. He took over the position in 2020 and is now stepping down two years earlier than planned due to health reasons. His designated successor, Polish-born Aleksandra "Ola" Staszel, is a film studies graduate and previously directed the Neisse Film Festival in the border region of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany. She sees Leipzig as a gateway between Eastern and Western Europe and emphasized her intention to further strengthen the festival's Eastern European program, which Terhechte had expanded.

As became clear in the conversation and the subsequent discussion with the audience, Staszel also faces significant challenges. For example, the Saxon biennial budget for 2025/2026 proposed cutting 22 percent of the festival's budget – a measure that was ultimately scrapped due to protests in the state parliament and from the festival itself. "But what will happen if the AfD is part of the governing coalition?" asked one audience member. The concern is justified: after all, the party is unlikely to have much interest in maintaining a festival that, through its very programming, clearly positions itself against nationalist and conservative values.

Ola Staszel, recently confirmed as the new director, has yet to present a convincing plan regarding this issue. She pointed to the film festival industry in the USA, where there are more opportunities than in Europe to secure private sector funding. Sponsorships, patronage, charity – could that be something for DOK Leipzig? For Terhechte, that's not a solution. He emphasizes how important it is to present a united front to politicians and public funders, together with the other Saxon film festivals.

One audience member vehemently agreed: From a progressive perspective, public funding must be fought for. Culture is just as important as the fire department or the road network. That's true – although, of course, it depends on what kind of culture is meant. If the goal is to preserve Leipzig and Saxony as a whole as places characterized by vibrant democratic debate and cultural participation from all segments of the population, where social justice is valued, and where people of different genders, backgrounds, and ages can live together harmoniously, then it would be disastrous to withdraw funding from DOK Leipzig – because the festival makes a vital contribution to this.