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DOK LEIPZIG 2019

DOK Leipzig to open with Marcus Vetter's The Forum

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- The official selection of the 62nd edition features 161 films, including 63 world, 27 international, 12 European and 50 German premieres

DOK Leipzig to open with Marcus Vetter's The Forum
The Forum by Marcus Vetter

The 62nd edition of the International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film DOK Leipzig (28 October-3 November) will open with the world premiere of The Forum [+see also:
film review
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interview: Marcus Vetter
film profile
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 by German filmmaker Marcus Vetter. Expectations are high, as Vetter and producer Christian Beetz are the first in the 50-year history of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to succeed in sending an independent film team behind the scenes of this international gathering.

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The Forum is part of the festival's International Competition, which also includes the world premieres of Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius' Exemplary Behaviour [+see also:
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(Lithuania/Slovenia/Bulgaria/Italy), Nasser Zamiri's Family Relations (Iran), Manfred Vainokivi's In Bed with a Writer [+see also:
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(Estonia), Susanne Kovács's It Takes a Family [+see also:
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interview: Susanne Kovács
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(Denmark), Maria Arlamovsky's Robolove [+see also:
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 (Austria), Johannes Holzhausen's The Royal Train (Austria/Romania) and Tamara Stepanyan's Village of Women [+see also:
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(France/Armenia). Karim Sayad's My English Cousin [+see also:
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interview: Karim Sayad
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(Qatar/Switzerland) and Huo Ning's Noodle Boy (China) will get their first European airings at Leipzig, while Damiano Giacomelli and Lorenzo Raponi's Siddharta (Italy) will have its European premiere.

In the increasingly popular Next Masters Competition, there are 11 films, six of which will have their world premieres at Leipzig: Fernanda Pessoa's Arid Zone (Brazil), Marco Ferrari's Never Whistle Alone [+see also:
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(Italy), Silva Khnkanosian's Nothing to Be Afraid of (France/Armenia), Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler's Safety123 [+see also:
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(Austria/Italy), Robin Harsch's Under the Skin [+see also:
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(Switzerland) and João Borges's Guaicurus Street (Brazil). There are also three international premieres planned in this section: Alice Heit's Deep Waters (France), Roman Bordun's The Diviners [+see also:
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(Ukraine) and Renu Savant's The Ebb Tide (India). The European premieres of Kelvin Kyung Kun Park's Army (South Korea) and Peter Van Goethem's Night Has Come (France) round off the selection.

In addition to Late Harvest (read more here), a non-competitive programme for big titles that have screened at festivals in the last year, the Official Selection also includes the International Competition Short Film (read more here), Next Masters Competition Short Film (read more here), German Competition (read more here) and German Competition Short Film (read more here). In the German Competition, for which a 40/60 quota was introduced in 2018, eight of the ten films were made by female directors or co-directors.

“We are taking initial stock of the quota following our two-year trial period,” says DOK Leipzig's outgoing artistic director, Leena Pasanen. “It might still be too early to make a pronouncement for the long term, but we are proud of the fact that some 45% of our total submissions are now coming from female directors. That’s 5% more than in previous years. Female directors appear to be gaining confidence in submitting their films. The gap between the sexes is constantly shrinking.”

On the whole programme, curator Ralph Eue says: “It came about almost organically that the grand subjects and issues of current global affairs are reflected in the films in our programmes. Nonetheless, we don’t regard our festival first and foremost as a platform for extended news coverage. Rather, with unabating energy, we are searching for different hues of documentation. Sounding out the boundaries of non-fictional narrative is an ever-present factor in our decisions.”

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