Our top 3 DOK Leipzig 2022 picks
DOK Leipzig is celebrating its 65th edition this year! DOK Leipzig is an annual festival for documentaries and animations that celebrates film and promotes debate. The festival focuses on the values of peace, tolerance, human dignity, and freedom of expression, along with a strong, individual artistic signature of the filmmakers. This year, the festival welcomes you from the 17th till the 23rd of October.
For over 60 years DOK Leipzig has been showing documentary and animated films from around the world. This unique combination of genres attracts more than 40,000 visitors to Leipzig every year. This year’s programme looks great. But these 3 films caught our eye immediately.
1. Ice Merchants
There is a house hanging from heavy ropes, firmly anchored to the rocks. Up there in the cliffs, far above the town below, a father lives with his son in the cold. In his 2D frame-by-frame animation, director João Gonzalez uses few colors, which makes the harsh shadows and extreme camera angles of his drawings all the more atmospheric. He has realized a metaphorical tale that can do without dialogue, relying on sound and images alone. Read more about Ice Merchants here.
2. Because I’m Fat
“Everyone says fat people eat too much. But it’s not that simple”, Christiane Hein states at the beginning of her film which follows seven-year-old Robert Becher from Erfurt in his struggle against excess pounds. The stages include a dieting sanatorium complete with “juice day”, humiliating physical education lessons at school and a visit to relatives in the country where Robert experiences a life without teasing and self-punishment. This is where the boy lets go – not easy when thoughts of weight fence one’s life in. Again and again, director Hein inserts scales as a symbolic image reminiscent of a guillotine-like torture instrument. A compassionate portrait. Read more about this documentary film here.
3. Love Is Not an Orange
“Imagine this camera is your mother”, a father tells his daughter. In the 1990s, scores of families from the Republic of Moldova began a ritualised mail exchange between the mothers, who had emigrated for economic reasons, and their relatives back home. The former sent money and goods; the latter sent videotapes. These amateur recordings are the material of this film. They testify to the painful gaps the absent persons left in the lives of those who stayed behind. Read more about this documentary film here.
Make sure to check out the full programme here! All (edited) synopses and images are from the website of DOK Leipzich.
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