22. Internationales Dokumentarfilmfestival München 02. bis 10. Mai ...

Introduction
Dear DOK.FEST fans,
The International Documentary Film Festival returns for its 22nd
year and as always we present an extremely varied and informative
‘best of’ programme selected for you from more than 1,200
films.
Never before in the history of cinema has the artistic documentary
film been as successful as it was in 2006. We will be screening the
highlights of the past year including many prize winners from other
festivals, premières, new discoveries and our personal favourites
that we sincerely recommend to you.
Documentary films are political. They celebrate the victories and
lament the defeats of the fight for human rights. They discuss
world trade, nutrition and migration. They get involved and they
remind us about forgotten wars, about victims and perpetrators.
Documentary films both entertain and surprise; they offer concise
reports with humour and irony, painting the world in grand, silent
images. They tell sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic family
stories, draw portraits of artists, musicians, role models and regular
people and experiment and enrich with new ideas, depicting all
facets of life. And their place is in the cinema – and it is for this
place that the films that we are screening have been made.
Look forward with us to enthralling artistic documentaries, stimulating
discussions and encounters with directors from throughout
the world.
The International Competition gathers together the most successful
films from last year’s international festivals along with works
which are original in form and content, established directors’
often very personal films and new, until now undiscovered, works
that DOK.FEST recommends to an international audience. 17 films
will be eligible for the Documentary Film Award, sponsored by the
Bavarian Broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk and Telepool worth
10,000 EUR, and the festival’s Special Documentary Award worth
2,500 EUR, sponsored by BLM (Bavarian Authority for Private
Broadcasting).
The International Programme presents a current and exceptional
range of documentary works, with films that we hope will reach as
great an audience as possible here at DOK.FEST as well as beyond
the festival. We are pleased that this year an especially high number
of directors will personally introduce their work in the Competition
and International Programme.
The Horizons section offers fresh and unusual insights from countries
in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe … and is
enjoying a growing popularity. It is meant, in particular, to be a
forum for directors whose films have been made under difficult
conditions. We hope for them and their work to gain as much interest
as possible and to have enduring international success.
DOK.FEST will award the Horizons Prize (3,000 EUR) for a particular
achievement in this section. We would like to thank ARTE, the
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