A festival on its borders: that's how Dok.Leipzig, the biggest German-language festival for documentary and animation films, showed up this year. Influenced by criticism of his film selection, overwhelmed by the self-imposed task of transforming anger into constructive discussions, Dok.Leipzig has become a lesson to learn, which can all fail in dealing with politically sensitive films.
The discussion started in 2017, when the festival "Mondays in Dresden", a film about the Dresden Pegida demos, showed. Silence was accused of filmmaker Sabine Michel by the audience, it came to discussions after each screening. Eventually, the festival was forced to publish a statement defending Michel's "open approach" while reaffirming his unwillingness to support Pegida's actions.
In 2018, the argument then came to a head when "Lord of the Toys" was included in the program - a calculated uncritical portrait of the creators around the successful Dresdner Influencer Max "Adlersson" Herzberg. Without breaking the self-dramatization of social media professionals, the film shows the young men battling and copying, but also cracking right jokes and slogans - and in the end even a racially motivated brawl at the Oktoberfest.
In the video: The trailer for "Lord of the Toys"
"The Fäustchen of the East risks for it (for the crass, Anm.dR) sometimes the Nazi lip and Cybermobbing, which escalates in the real," the festival catalog joked down what has been shown jokingly. Filmmakers Pablo Ben Yakov and André Krummel also wanted to have identified "no political beliefs" with their protagonists. Everything about hate speech is simply forced by the attention-economy of social media, which makes extreme behavior monetary.
The trivialization strategies of the filmmakers, who in the film for example, belongs to the attack on the Oktoberfest after a short time turn off the camera or hide in conversations about NPD contacts, were sharply criticized - as well as the handling of the festival with the film itself. The Leipzig Cinématèque, as an official festival venue for the performance of "Lord of the Toys" contractually distanced itself from what has been shown ("Our stage and our hall are not Nazis!") And called to "a critical confrontation, the film in the context DOK Leipzig has not been awarded so far ".
Not enough time
The evening ended in an eyewitness report emotionally charged extremely discussion. The filmmakers encountered without moderation on an angry audience, which was still under the impressions of right-wing violence: 2016, there had come to a raid by neo-Nazis on the neighboring district Connewitz.
After the evening at the Cinématèque, Ben Yakov and Krummel reported that they had "never felt so discriminated". The jury for the German competition, consisting of the Chairman of the DEFA Foundation Ralf Schenk, the film scholar Brigitte Mayr and the writer Helene Hegemann, honored "Lord of the Toys" with the Golden Dove.
How all this could happen should now be dealt with in a symposium in 2019. Title: "Who owns the truth?" However, the discussion about the stumbling block, "Lord of the Toys", was the last item in the two-day program scheduled for Friday night. Far too little time to keep the debate calm - especially with Dok.Leipzig's program director Ralph Eue, responsible for the invitation of "Lord of the Toys" to the festival and the planning of the symposium, one of two remaining possible contributions The audience denied.
"Doors against Dostoyevsky"
"Lord of the Toys" was not shown again during the symposium, but assumed to be known - which is a difficult assumption for a movie that is not available on streaming portals or on a DVD after a very small theatrical release. Instead, "Stau" by Thomas Heise, a documentary film from 1992 about a group of young Nazis in Halle. The comparison with "Lord of the Toys" was therefore as obvious as unproductive, since there could be no direct comparison.
Jana Mila Lippitz / DOK Leipzig
The filmmakers André Krummel (left) and Pablo Ben Yakov on the podium
The podium, consisting of the filmmakers Thomas Heise, Pablo Ben Yakov and André Krummel as well as Helene Hegemann and Matthias Dell (who also writes for SPIEGEL as a freelance author) and moderated by the film scholar Stefanie Diekmann, tried it in some ways anyway. This endeavor was then denied by Programmer Eue with a Susan Sontag paraphrase: Here would be imposed on the comparison between Dostoevsky and the Doors, one would not have to decide between the movies.
This was in turn annoyed dismissed by parts of the audience and the podium, after all, was the canonization of "Lord of the Toys" through the festival just what to argue over.
Nevertheless, the statement was instructive, because it shows how ambiguous the relationship of the festival to really open discussions. Already in March, the festival of the Cinématèque had the collaboration "until further notice" terminated - because of "events around the film 'Lord of the Toys'," to which the festival on Spiegel demand but did not want to comment more precisely. For the municipal cinema the refusal would have been existence-threatening according to own data, it would not have opened for 2019 a new financing.
Only half welcome is not possible
Nevertheless, the renewed cooperation with Dok.Leipzig is also kept open at the Cinématèque: because one was unhappy with the chaotic discussion of 2018 - and because in 2020 a new festival management will be in office. Christoph Terhechte, longtime head of the Forum section of the Berlinale, will be taking over from Leena Pasanen, who will be leaving after five years.
DOK Leipzig
Film still from "condition and terrain", the German winning film 2019
What can be done with pubs for movies like "Lord of the Toys" is hard to quantify. Festivals are always also hosts for filmmakers and their works, only half of them can not be, a basic distancing can ultimately be done only by non-invitation. The crucial discussions must therefore take place in the selection commissions. Here it must be checked whether a film succeeds in distancing itself from its object. By what means this can be achieved, the symposium could have provided an accurate, public and collective analysis of films such as "Stau" or "Lord of the Toys". But this opportunity was missed.
After all, the new jury of the German competition provided a little salvation by honoring Ute Adamczewski's "condition and terrain". In an extremely precise montage of up-to-date photographic material and archived documents from Saxony, the filmmaker shows how the instrument of so-called protective custody unleashed sadism and greed for profit in German society in the first months of Nazi rule. At least this award can be supported by the new festival director.