DOK Leipzig 2025

Festival Description

The International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film – in short: DOK Leipzig – is an annual festival for documentary and animated films. The festival is sponsored and organised by the city of Leipzig. It commissions the non-profit Leipzig-based DOK-Filmwochen GmbH with the preparation, implementation and management of the festival.

2025 Call for Entries

The 68th edition takes place in Leipzig from 27 October to 2 November 2025.

Eligibility criteria:

• The festival is open to documentary and animated films as well as animated documentaries and hybrid forms of documentary storytelling.
• Eligible are films of all lengths with a production year of 2024 or 2025 that have not been publicly screened before October 2024.
•  Films up to 40 minutes qualify for the short film awards, films over 40 minutes are considered feature-length films

Categories:

The festival programme is organised into four competitions and two out-of-competition sections, whose films can be nominated for awards across all sections.

• International Competition Documentary Film ((documentary films of all lengths)
  World or International premieres preferred, European premiere is required. For films up to 40 minutes, at least a German premiere is required, but preference is given to World and International premieres.
• International Competition Animated Film  (animated films of all lengths)
  At least a German premiere is required.
• German Competition Documentary Film (documentary films of all lengths, (co-) produced in Germany)
  World premieres required
• Audience Competition (documentary and animated films over 40 min)
  At least a German premiere is required
• Camera Lucida (Out-of-competition) -(experimental documentary and animated films of all lengths)
  At least a German premiere is required
• Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe (Out-of-competition) - (Documentaries and animated films of all lengths with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe)
  At least a German premiere is required
  
  
• Entry Form
• Regulations
• Deadline: 1 July 2025

ARCHIVE

2020 Festival Coverage

• Awards 2020

2019 Festival Coverage

• Brother Quay for DOK Leipzig 2019

2018 Festival Coverage

Animation Juries:

The winners in the International Competition Short Documentary and Animated Film will be determined by a jury composed of British producer Greg Sanderson, Barbara Truyen, director of the documentary film department at the Dutch television broadcaster VPRO, as well as Austria’s Jürgen Hagler, professor for computer animation and animation studies and director of the Ars Electronica Animation Festival in Linz.

Official Selection 2018:

From Argentina to Egypt, Lebanon to Latvia, Montenegro to Madagascar, and Sierra Leone to Saudi Arabia – this year we are showing a grand total of 306 films from 50 different countries. Of the 3,150 works viewed by the selection committee over the course of the last year, 160 have now made it into the Official Selection, the further films will be screened in the scope of our Special Programmes.

DOK Leipzig’s Official Selection is composed of six competitions and the International Programme as well as the new section LATE HARVEST. Female directors account for a full fifty per cent of the films of the Official Selection.

In the films of the individual programmes and competitions, DOK Leipzig takes a look at the legacy of the Soviet Union, at self-determined women and contemporary female figures, at architectural masterpieces and deep into the abyss – while attempting to get to the roots of current political trends in Germany, Europe and beyond.

Guests: Ruth Beckermann and Werner Herzog

At this year’s festival edition, the work of Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann will be featured in several ways. Beckermann, who is regarded as a co-founder of the independent film scene in Austria, will be honoured with a homage, and she will also give insights into her filmmaking in a masterclass. In addition, she will be one of the jurors deciding about the winners in the Next Masters Competitions.

Werner Herzog is without a doubt among the most influential German filmmakers in the history of cinema. Over the course of his career as a director, he has made more than 60 documentaries and feature films. At DOK Leipzig 2018, he is not only presenting his new film Meeting Gorbachev as the opening film – his documentary work is also the focus of a Homage bearing the title ECSTATIC TRUTHS.