The film programme of DOK.fest München. At the cinema. At home.

3 to 14 May 2023 at the Munich venues
8 to 21 May 2023 @home

As always, DOK.fest München opens the view out to the world: with 130 of the best and most current international documentaries from 55 countries. Our goal is the greatest possible participation in our films, which is why we bring them to the big screen in Munich cinemas as well as to home screens throughout Germany: DOK.fest stays dual.

PHOBOS (Germany 2014, Noah Schuller).

#Identity/Life Crisis

DOK.deutsch Wettbewerb

Intense stories and the unusual on one's own doorstep: the competition presents films that deal with people and topics in German-speaking countries. The VIKTOR DOK.deutsch Competition is endowed with 7,500 euros. The prize sponsor is Sky.

AUS DEM ABSEITS – FROM THE SIDELINE (Germany 2015, Simon Brückner). The filmmaker, Simon Brückner, goes in search of his long-deceased father, one of the central figures of the German students’ movement. A picture of a multi-faceted character emerges and a piece of German history is retold.

#Identity/Life Crisis, #History/Religion

FAMILY BUSINESS (Germany 2014, Christiane Büchner). Anna is a somewhat grumpy, frail old lady who requires care that her daughter can no longer provide. Jowita is the Polish elderly care nurse who is meant to look after her. A case study of a topic that will become more and more important in the future.

#Eastern Europe, #Identity/Life Crisis

NICHT ALLES SCHLUCKEN – DON'T SWALLOW EVERYTHING (Germany 2015, Jana Kalms, Piet Stolz, Sebastian Winkels). “None of the psycho-pharmaceutical drugs have a healing approach. They subdue symptoms.” NICHT ALLES SCHLUCKEN highlights the eternal stigma of mental illness, the power of medicine and questions our perceptions of normality and mental health.

#Identity/Life Crisis

DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency

The films in this series tell stories from countries in transition. They are supported by ENGAGEMENT GLOBAL with funds from the BMZ and are nominated for the VIKTOR DOK.horizonte Competition, endowed with 5,000 euros. The award donor is the Petra-Kelly-Stiftung.

CE QU'IL RESTE DE LA FOLIE – REMNANCE OF MADNESS (France, Senegal 2014, Joris Lachaise). A psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Dakar: who gets cured here and by whom? The psychiatrists consult with traditional healers. An intelligent, visually elaborate investigation of insanity and approaches towards it in postcolonial society.

#Identity/Life Crisis, #Human Rights/Migration, #Africa

DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG – YAWMAT KALB TA'R (Lebanon, United Arab Emirates 2014, Bassem Fayad). War, childhood, family. For the Lebanese filmmaker, Bassem Fayad, making his diary documentary, DIARIES OF A FLYING DOG, was also like going to therapy. Why do he and his mother suffer from anxiety disorders? Why does his dog not leave the family property? A humorous self-evaluation.

#Middle East/Arabic World, #Identity/Life Crisis

LA MORT DU DIEU SERPENT – DEATH OF THE SERPENT GOD (France 2014, Damien Froidevaux). 20 year-old Koumba is thrown out of France. She has to go back to Senegal, a land that she doesn’t know – she was just two years old when she and her parents left for Paris. In this sensational long-term observation, LA MORT DU DIEU SERPENT depicts what can happen after deportation.

#Identity/Life Crisis, #Human Rights/Migration, #Gender/Emancipation, #Africa

LA SELVA INFLADA – THE INFLATED JUNGLE (Colombia, Spain 2015, Alejandro Naranjo). A series of suicides among youths who had to travel far from home to go to school, shocked their indigenous community in the Columbian Amazon. THE INFLATED JUNGLE is a poetic and atmospheric film, which does not deliver any simple explanations but relies on intuitive insights.

#Latin America, #Identity/Life Crisis

Student Award

The Student Award of DOK.fest München presents outstanding documentary films by students of German-speaking film schools. The films are nominated for the megaherz Student Award, worth 3,000 Euros.

GLEICHGEWICHT (Austria 2014, Bernhard Wenger). Denise goes to Vienna’s Prater nearly every day and there, among the neon lights, she talks about her difficult childhood. The amusement park makes her feel welcome. Her favourite thing to do is to stand in the middle of the tagada, which effectively presses people against its wall as it spins around and easily finds balance.

#Identity/Life Crisis

HELIKOPTER HAUSARREST (Germany 2014, Constantin Hatz). Held captive in his mother’s house with a shackle on his leg, 27-year-old Benjamin serves a ten-month custodial sentence. The small house in the outskirts of Vienna is cramped. Benjamin makes music, lifts weights and flies his helicopter. His mother works, folds laundry and makes phone calls. Then in the evening they eat together. The distance that has built up between them over the years gradually gets smaller again. A totally different kind of family reunion.

#Identity/Life Crisis

HINTERWELTEN – HINTERLAND (Germany 2014, Lion Bischof, Jonas Heldt, Felicitas Sonvilla). Racing through the streets of the small town on a little moped to the employment agency to ask for a job. Two metal thieves, who scrounge from disused factories to make money. A mother and a daughter speak of the desolation arising from the lack of people here, especially the lack of some sensible men. Wunsiedel on the border to Czech Republic is over, or isn't it?

#Politics/Social Conflicts, #Identity/Life Crisis, #Coming-of-Age

IF MAMA AIN'T HAPPY, NOBODY'S HAPPY (Netherlands 2014, Mae De Jong). “If you want to make a film about independent women, shouldn’t you make one about our family?” That is, four generations of women, three of which have managed without men. Tradition? Heredity? The daughter scrutinises her life. Is her destiny predetermined by her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother?

#Identity/Life Crisis, #Gender/Emancipation

NEIGHBOURHOOD H. – BUURT H. (Netherlands 2014, Biserka Suran). Three experimental arrangements in one residential building: 1. A chair and some questions, 2. Communal planting in the courtyard, 3. A laid table, which the residents are invited to. Does it succeed in bringing together this involuntary community and establishing connections within it? The film is a social experiment, a performative documentation about living alongside others and ways to approach it.

#Art/Culture, #Identity/Life Crisis

NORTH EAST HARD WEST – NOORD OOST HARD WEST (Netherlands 2014, Bart van den Aardweg). Kickboxers in Amsterdam West and their motivation, which lies somewhere between escape, education and aggression. The central location is a gym where youths and young men meet to box. Group dynamics, hierarchies, violence, self-discovery and self-assertion – the harsh reality of the street becomes increasingly blurred with that in the fitness studio.

#Sports, #Identity/Life Crisis

PADRONE E SOTTO (Switzerland 2014, Michele Cirigliano). We find ourselves in a small town in Italy in an unpleasantly neon-lit run down bar. A circle of men are playing the card and drinking game, Padrone e Sotto. Those who drink win. The director tries to understand the game himself. Where exactly are the boundaries between game and reality? Sometimes the group of men also leaves the bar, for example to go hunting boar.

#Identity/Life Crisis

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