DOK Leipzig’s Co-Pro Market will feature 35 projects from across 34 countries, with 50 per cent of the selected projects directed by women filmmakers.
Taking place in Germany between October 26-27, this year’s selection sees films from underrepresented countries including DR Congo, Namibia, Palestine, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria, with themes including colonial past, indigenous resistance and socio-political upheavals.
Included in the lineup are Romanian director Ruxandra Gubernat and Bulgarian director Maria Stanisheva’s I Am Every Woman, about reproductive oppression; Ruben Mayoko and Junior Mozese’s Abeti about a Congolese family dealing with single motherhood and sex work; and South Korean director Juyeon Yang’s Neither Shadow Nor Light, which looks at the sexual violence of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising.
Returning producers to DOK Leipzig include Sonja Henrici, who produced DOK Leipzig 2024 opener Tracing Light, with Maryam Haddadi‘s The Enemy and Ada Solomon, who returns with Paula Onet’s Unbalanced.
Also being showcased are Syrian filmmaker Rami Farah’s A1, Max Kerkhoff’s Chile-Germany co-production Snails, Georgian filmmaker Shorena Tevzadze’s Tbilisi-set Concrete Grassland and Almira Saifullina’s Dala from Kazakhstan.
This year’s selection also features a diversity of forms, ranging from hybrid works that use realism such as Jumana Manna’s Jerusalem Boys, to dual-timeline narratives such as Almira Saifullina’s Dala, as well as animated documentary projects including Joel Kachi Benson’s The Road To Bama, Claudia Tosi’s The Spectres Of The Camp.
Also present in the lineup are archival projects such as Lucas Weglinski’s Hunting Season, Yaela Gottlieb’s Je Vous Salue, Peru and Brina Klampfer Merčnik and Miha Možina’s Paloma, the Lonely Bird.
Seven awards will be presented, including two new awards: the Verità Films Award for best project and the GRAP archive award.
Industry programme
Highlights of this year’s industry programme will include a talk called ’Doc Together: When Freedom of Expression is at Risk’ as part of DOK Leipzig’s joint initiative with the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Doc Together. It will explore the escalating threats to press and media freedom across Europe.
’Making Space for Queer Cinema – The Curators’ Role’ will focus on how filmmakers can challenge mainstream depictions of queerness and the role film festivals can play in promoting intersectional storytelling within their programmes.
The Generation Africa 2.0 strand will present five works-in-progress from across Senegal, the DR Congo, Kenya, and Benin.
Also featuring in the programme will be a panel on European adult animation and a DOK Industry Workshop, ’Building a Framework for Respectful Romani Representation’.
This year will also see the fourth edition of the Animation Lab DOK Leipzig. Led by producer Jean-François Le Corre, whose credits include Vivement Lundi!, and Uri Kranot, known for Tindrum, the three-day workshop aims to help producers develop their first animated documentary.
The fifth annual DOK Archive Market will include a panel discussion on AI and ethics when working with archival footage.
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