The film programme of the 40th DOK.fest München: In the cinema. At home.

Like every year, DOK.fest München 2025 opens up a view of the world: with 105 of the best and most current international documentaries from 58 countries.

For the 40th DOK.fest München, the former programme scheme is being dissolved. The festival films are divided into thematically focussed sections based on current themes. 

Our aim is to ensure the greatest possible participation in our films, which is why we bring them to the big screen in Munich cinemas and cultural venues as well as to home screens throughout Germany as barrier-free as possible: DOK.fest München stays dual!
OF MEN AND WAR (France, Switzerland 2014, Laurent Bécue-Renard, DOK.international Main Competition). The Pathway Home is a facility for soldiers who have served in Iraq and have post-traumatic stress disorder. Blighted by anxiety, aggression and relationship problems, they speak of their bloody experiences of war in group therapy sessions. Bécue-Renard closely observes their difficult journey back to civilian life.
#North America, #Human Rights/Migration
SOMETHING BETTER TO COME (Denmark, Poland 2014, Hanna Polak, DOK.international Main Competition). A totally normal life, like most people take for granted, is a long way away for Yula. She lives in Europe’s biggest landfill site, a few kilometres from Moscow. The only thing left for her is hope for a better future. Far from social romanticism and without dwelling on misery, in poetic images the film tells a present-day fairytale of humanity in an inhumane world.
#SOS Nominees, #Eastern Europe, #Human Rights/Migration, #Coming-of-Age, #14jugendfrei
THE QUEEN OF SILENCE (Germany, Poland 2014, Agnieszka Zwiefka, DOK.international Main Competition). Denisa is partially deaf and battles her way through the tough everyday life in a Roma community somewhere in Poland. The ten-year-old has never learned to talk, yet she loves to dance and to create her own colourful and bright musical world.
#Dance/Theatre, #SOS Nominees, #Eastern Europe, #Human Rights/Migration, #14jugendfrei
THOSE WHO FEEL THE FIRE BURNING (Netherlands 2014, Morgan Knibbe, DOK.international Main Competition). A man drowns when he falls from a refugee boat but his ghost reaches Europe, wanders through the towns and observes the chaos. He sees the dark side of Europe: people who arrived with hope and are now stuck. An experiment that lies somewhere between documentary and fiction.
#Human Rights/Migration, #Cineasts
CE QU'IL RESTE DE LA FOLIE – REMNANCE OF MADNESS (France, Senegal 2014, Joris Lachaise, DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency). 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
EL HOGAR AL REVÉS – UPSIDE DOWN HOME (Mexico 2014, Itzel Martínez del Cañizo, DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency). Over the course of a year, the filmmaker followed a group of young people in a modern working-class housing estate in Tijuana. The parents are absent; they work day and night to pay their debts. The children’s loneliness is the price they pay for the dream of having their own home.
#Latin America, #Human Rights/Migration, #14jugendfrei, #SOS Nominees
LA MORT DU DIEU SERPENT – DEATH OF THE SERPENT GOD (France 2014, Damien Froidevaux, DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency). 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
OUR TERRIBLE COUNTRY – BALADNA ALRAHEEB (Lebanon, Syria 2014, Mohammad Ali Atassi, Ziad Homsi, DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency). The prominent intellectual, Saleh, and a young photographer fight for revolution in Syria, each in their own individual way, and, in doing so, descend deeper and deeper into existential crisis. In exile in Istanbul, they are safe, while their relatives are in mortal danger and their land in ruins.
#Middle East/Arabic World, #Human Rights/Migration
THE STORM MAKERS (Cambodia, France 2014, Guillaume Suon, DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency). Sold as a servant and exploited as a prostitute. In Cambodia human trafficking is thriving. Alongside the fate of a young woman, who returns home traumatised, the film also sheds light on the perpetrators.
#Human Rights/Migration, #Asia
POEMA DEL DIA – POEM OF THE DAY (Germany 2015, Youdid Kahveci, Student Award). In a poor area of Medellín, Columbia, 12 year-old Kevin sells poems and reads them aloud. He doesn’t feel comfortable at home and that is why he often escapes to visit a friend, Amelia, an old woman who wears a cap and lives in a small house on the hillside. There she talks about her life, her family and her dreams. He reads her her letters. But life is not always so simple: Amelia has money troubles.
#Latin America, #Human Rights/Migration
ZELIM'S CONFESSION (Germany 2013, Natalia Mikhaylova, Student Award). At a bus stop in Ingushetia, Zelim is arrested by the police. He is accused of assaulting someone, or at least he is supposed to admit that he intended to. Five years in prison follow. Zelim won’t admit to something he hasn’t done. Today Zelim is a refugee in Oslo. His family is threatened because they have filed a suit against the police. A story of corruption and the business of terrorism.
#Human Rights/Migration
LITTLE PEOPLE BIG DREAMS (China, Singapore 2014, Chun Kit Mak, DOK.guest Canada). A theme park where people of short stature live in their own dwarf world – it sounds like something from the 19th Century. In the Chinese “Dwarves Empire,” a place that is simultaneously a ghetto, a spectacle and a sanctuary, it is a cynical reality.
#Human Rights/Migration, #Asia
THE LAST MOOSE IN AOLUGUYA – HAN DA HAN (China 2014, Gu Tao, DOK.guest Canada). Weijia is one of the Reindeer Evenkis, a minority group in northeast China. Displaced by the government and deprived of the opportunity to hunt, all they have left is alcohol and stories of days gone by. A striking film about their loss of identity and lack of agency.
#Human Rights/Migration, #Asia
DRONE (Norway 2014, Tonje Hessen Schei, DOK.panorama). In a barrack in the USA, young men sit with joysticks and kill people. On the other side of the world the young and the old, men and women are dying. DRONE is an impressive document that speaks out against drone and robot wars that have already become part of our everyday lives.
#Politics/Social Conflicts, #Human Rights/Migration
FLOTEL EUROPA (Denmark, Serbia 2015, Vladimir Tomic, DOK.panorama). FLOTEL EUROPA was a container ship that accommodated hundreds of war refugees from Sarajevo in Copenhagen in 1992. For Vladimir, his mother and older brother, it was their new home, too. A touching portrait of a refugee and, at the same time, an amusing coming of age story in VHS images.
#Human Rights/Migration
12

Our technical partners:

  • Logo Sponsor
  • Logo Sponsor