EYES WIDE OPEN: All festival films of DOK.fest München

EYES WIDE OPEN

Over 100 current international documentaries will open up new perspectives on our world at DOK.fest Munich – from May 6 to 25, 2026.

Get an overview of the programme through our themed sections.
In each section, we present a signature film, accompanied by an in-depth FocusTalk.

We’re also presenting the films from our educational program, DOK.education.

You can buy your ticket directly on the respective film page.

 

DOK.international Main Competition
MELTING SOULS – NORILSK – L'ETREINTE DE GLACE (France 2017, François-Xavier Destors). Cut off from the world, the town of Norilsk lies in the deepest Siberian north. Against all odds, it rose up from the foundations of a gulag. In this environment everything is possible. Surrounded by ice, the inhabitants find their own means of escape.
#The Places you call Home, #Hero's Journey, #Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus

DOK.deutsch Wettbewerb
HIER UND DORT (Deutschland 2018, Bettina Renner). Haris was born in Dresden. The teenager and his Bosnian mother both have only limited leave to remain in Germany. Rejected, Haris creates a Bosnian identity for himself – unlike his sister who is fully integrated.
#coming of age, #The Places you call Home, #Who am I?

Student Award
6129 M2 (Schweiz 2017, Julie Bellard). Memories from childhood: together a father and daughter imagine the ideal surroundings for their life. Now, as they did back then, they view rented houses in the most varied of locations without ever moving in. An experiment in images and sound about inherited dreams, the value of which lies precisely in the fact that they never become reality.
#for Cinephiles, #The Places you call Home
MI AMADO, LAS MONTAÑAS – MY BELOVED, THE MOUNTAINS (Spanien, Schweiz 2017, Alberto Martín Menacho). Sometimes a documentary film is like a conundrum. Mountains, rural depopulation, traditions that are preserved but are losing their significance. A childhood – still free, wild and beautiful. A youth – seemingly endless and yet already in the past. Poetic, mysterious and on the fine line between document, memory and myth.
#The Places you call Home, #for Cinephiles

DOK.guest USA
HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING (USA 2018, Ramell Ross). Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South – trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously existing as a testament to dreaming – despite the odds.
#The Places you call Home, #North America, #for Cinephiles

Retrospective Helga Reidemeister
RODINA HEISST HEIMAT – RODINA MEANS HOME (Deutschland 1992, Helga Reidemeister). In RODINA HEISST HEIMAT, Helga Reidemeister observes a Soviet regiment’s withdrawal from the former border region of the GDR over six months in 1991 and follows some of the soldiers back to their homes.
#The Places you call Home, #Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus

DOK.panorama
ELISH'S NOTEBOOKS – HAMACHBAROT SHEL ELISH (Israel 2017, Golan Rise). After the death of their mother, the children find her diaries. One for each child, seven in all. They begin to read and travel back to their childhood in a Kibbutz in the Israel of the 50s and 60s. A mood of optimism versus maternal instincts? A film that stirs the emotions.
#Middle East, #Looking Back, #Who am I?, #The Places you call Home
LAST DAYS IN SHIBATI – DERNIERS JOURS A SHIBATI (France 2017, Hendrick Dusollier). In the shadows of a Chinese metropolis lies the old quarter of Shibati, which is due to be demolished. The remaining inhabitants are astonished that a European filmmaker is taking interest in their disappearing world.
#The Places you call Home, #Asia
LOVE IS POTATOES – LIEFDE IS AARDAPPELEN (Netherlands 2017, Aliona van der Horst). How can a family history be reconstructed when communication is not possible? After the death of her mother, the filmmaker travels to her home village in Russia and tells not only the story of her family through personal found footage but also that of the Stalin era.
#The Places you call Home, #Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus, #Looking Back

Best of Fests
AUGENBLICKE: GESICHTER EINER REISE – FACES, PLACES (France 2017, Agnès Varda. Co-Director: JR). Director Agnès Varda and street artist, JR, travel with his camera-van through France taking photos of the people they meet along the way. The pictures are then printed larger than life and stuck on the walls of buildings. A fantastic film about a unique art project.
#for Cinephiles, #The Artist is Present – Films on Art, #The Places you call Home
GLOBAL FAMILY (Deutschland 2017, Melanie Andernach, Andreas Köhler). Scattered across the globe as a result of the Somali Civil War, the Shaash family has to make an important decision: where should Imra (88) live? At the same time the four generations of the transnational refugee family are each following their own dreams of family, home and the future.
#Africa, #The Places you call Home
LOTS OF KIDS, A MONKEY AND A CASTLE (Spain 2017, Gustavo Salmeron). “A chaotic family makes chaotic decisions in a chaotic way.” This sentence by one family member sums up their clan rather well. The eccentric but lovable Julita, mother of the filmmaker Gustavo Salmerón, pulls the strings. An intoxicating docu-comedy.
#The Places you call Home, #Southern Europe
SPRECHSTUNDE – ATELIER DE CONVERSATION (Austria, France 2017, Bernhard Braunstein). What do clichees and a metro station have to do with each other? What is the meaning of love? What do people miss the most when they are far away from home? We learn the answers to these questions in a weekly discussion group at Paris’ Centre Pompidou. People with the most diverse identities and backgrounds get together to discuss with one another.
#The Places you call Home, #Critics and Visionaries
ZENTRALFLUGHAFEN THF – CENTRAL AIRPORT THF (Brazil, France, Germany 2018, Karim Aïnouz). On the historic site of the former Berlin Tempelhof airport, two worlds meet each other. Makeshift accommodation temporarily houses refugees and, on the other side of the fence, lies Tempelhofer Feld, a public park and playing field for leisure activities and an alternative lifestyle.
#The Places you call Home

Munich Premieres
IMPREZA – DAS FEST – IMPREZA – THE CELEBRATION (Deutschland 2017, Alexandra Wesolowski). “I don't want Europe to remain a community of values: it should be a monetary union again,” declares a relative in Alexandra Wesolowski’s intimate family portrait that offers deep insights into Polish society and deals with Europe’s shift to the right.
#Nominees FFF Documentary Talent Award, #The Places you call Home, #Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus
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