09/10/2020 - The festival will show 150 films and XR works, including 43 world, 11 international, 7 European and 36 German premieres, and will introduce a new section, Camera Lucida

The International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film DOK Leipzig has announced the full programme for its 63rd edition, set to run in Leipzig cinemas and online from 26 October-1 November.

Marking a significant decrease in the number of films compared to previous years and a restructuring of the programme sections, which festival director Christoph Terhechte outlines in his interview for Cineuropa, the event will show 150 films and XR works, including 43 world, 11 international, seven European and 36 German premieres.

There are 12 titles in DOK Leipzig's flagship International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, six of which are world premieres: Ada Ushpiz's Children [+see also:
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film profile] (Germany), Daria Slyusarenko's Joy (Russia), Linas Mikuta's Roman's Childhood (Lithuania), Darío Doria's Vicenta (Argentina) and Jim Finn's The Annotated Field Guide of Ulysses S. Grant (USA).

First shown as a Special Screening at Toronto after earning Cannes' Official Selection label, Dieudo Hamadi’s Downstream to Kinshasa [+see also:
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“The international competitions of DOK Leipzig focus on the fruitful encounter between young people who are eager to experiment and those who have remained true to the curiosity and creativity they started out with,” says Terhechte. “For the first time, therefore, the international jury in the competition for long films will award not only a Golden Dove, but also a Silver Dove, which is explicitly intended for the best film by an up-and-coming director.”

The newly established Camera Lucida section will present five challenging films out of competition, "bringing together captivating documentaries that challenge the conventions of cinema and confront reality in a particularly lucid way”, as Terhechte puts it.

The selection includes Avalon by Thai filmmaker Thunska Pansittivorakul (Santikhiri Sonata [+see also:
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interview: Tadhg O'Sullivan
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The full programme of DOK Leipzig can be found here.