49th Leipzig International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

Founded in 1955 in the German Democratic Republic, the documentary film festival of Leipzig continues — also after the reunification of Germany — to be a bridge between films from the East and from the West. Since 1995 it’s the only German film festival with two competitions, one for documentaries and one for animations no matter how long the films may be. It also surprises with several retrospectives in both sections.

Filmmaker Arash T. Riahi won the Critics’ Prize for the best documentary with his Exile Family Movie (Austria 2006) for “its personal and even though universal touch on a contemporary subject. It links together two civilizations in both a serious and humorous way.”

The FIPRESCI prize for the best animation went to My Love (Moja Ijubow) by Alexander Petrov from Russia because the films “is an exquisite impressionist vision with a very poetic narrative and profound psychology. An outstanding painting with brilliant animation.”