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.

Please enter the festival edition you would like to find out more about a film in the year field.

DOK.guest Canada

MUSIC FROM A FRONTIER TOWN (Hörspiel) (Deutschland 2018, Michaela Melián). Munich’s Amerikahaus, established after the Second World War, was central to the USA’s re-education programme. Its declared aim was the de-nazification of the German post-war population. Its cultural activities attracted over 80,000 visitors per month.

#North America, #Looking Back

DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency

DEMONS IN PARADISE (France, Sri Lanka 2017, Jude Ratnam). For over 20 years a civil war raged between the Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. What brought about such an unleashing of violence? The filmmaker Jude Ratnam sets out on a journey to explore the country’s past and the memories of his family members. In the end there remains a promise to overcome fear.

#Looking Back, #Asia, #Human Stains

DOK.panorama

EASTERN MEMORIES (Finland 2018, Niklas Kullström, Martti Kaartinen). A hundred years ago a Finn made his mark on the history of Mongolia. At the age of 25, Gustav John Ramstedt travelled there to study the nomad languages. He stayed most of his life and experienced the region’s transition into modernity.

#Asia, #Hero's Journey, #Looking Back

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

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

THE OSLO DIARIES (Israel, Kanada 2018, Daniel Sivan, Mor Loushy). In the 1990s the Oslo peace process offered hope that a solution to the decades-old conflict between Israel and Palestine would be found. Archive material, interviews and re-enactments tell the inside story of what happened– a tale of great sadness but of even greater humanity.

#Looking Back, #Middle East

Munich Premieres

MAXIM LEBEN – EIN ALTES KINO ERZÄHLT (Deutschland 2017, Peter Heller). From the late 1970s, under the direction of Sigi Daiber, the Maxim, one of Munich’s oldest cinemas, became a stronghold of alternative film culture and played a part in the beginnings of DOK.fest Munich. When the end of the venue seemed to be inevitable, four cinema enthusiasts reinvented the Maxim.

#The Places you call Home, #for Cinephiles, #Looking Back

WIR TRÄUMTEN VOM FRÜHLING – MY RUSSIAN SPRING (Deutschland, Russland 2017, Xenia Sigalova). Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a young adult, Xenia Sigalova went with her parents to the West. Almost two decades later she returns and hardly recognises her home country. Nowadays she is a filmmaker – what has happened to her friends?

#The Places you call Home, #Nominees FFF Documentary Talent Award, #Looking Back, #Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus

DOK.special

GUARDIANS OF HERITAGE – HÜTER DER GESCHICHTE – GUARDIANS OF HERITAGE – CULTURE CLASH (Deutschland 2017, Emanuel Rotstein). The documentary GUARDIANS OF HERITAGE shows Hannes Jaenicke and other prominent supporters meeting different people around the world, who raise their voices against the destruction of culture and world heritage and fight for its preservation.

#Looking Back

NACHLASS – LEGACY (Deutschland 2017, Gabriele Voss, Christoph Hübner). NACHLASS offers us a moving insight into the generations of children and grandchildren of high-ranking Nazis and holocaust survivors and how they handle the heavy burden of this legacy. An affirmation of an active culture of remembrance.

#Looking Back

OPERATION PROVIANT – PROPAGANDASCHLACHT BERLINER LUFTBRÜCKE (Deutschland 2018, Andreas Hancke, Michael Kloft). The Berlin Airlift, which supplied the west sector in 1948, was, first and foremost, a tremendous propaganda battle at the start of the Cold War that turned the occupying forces into protecting powers. Andreas Hancke deconstructs a myth.

#Looking Back

SCHLAGZEILEN GEGEN HITLER (Deutschland 2018, Ute Bönnen). The “Münchner Post” was a social democratic newspaper. Until 1933 its editors bravely campaigned for press freedom and against Hitler. An emboldening story: a story about moral courage and resistance.

#Looking Back

SPK KOMPLEX – SPK COMPLEX (Deutschland 2018, Gerd Kroske). Five hundred gun licenses for patients – this is what a Socialist Patients’ Collective leaflet called for on the eve of the German Autumn. Wouldn’t that be the most effective psychotherapy for us all: the abolition of the capitalist patriarchal society? The director Gerd Kroske digs deep into a little known chapter of German history.

#Looking Back, #Critics and Visionaries

UNE JEUNESSE ALLEMANDE – A GERMAN YOUTH (France, Germany, Switzerland 2015, Jean-Gabriel Périot). The federal republic of the 1960s and its youth: upheaval, disillusionment, politicisation, and radicalisation. Without commentary and using solely archive material, this skilfully assembled film conveys the rise and fall of the RAF with its sights always on the present.

#Critics and Visionaries, #Looking Back

BEST OF FESTS

THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING – DRUGA STRANA SVEGA (France, Qatar, Serbia 2017, Mila Turajlic). “I don’t know – this country isn’t normal.” For years Srbijanka Turajlic has campaigned against political injustice from her home in Belgrade. Her daughter, Mila creates an extremely intimate portrayal of her and tells the story of her turbulent homeland of Serbia.

#Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus, #Looking Back

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