Program
69. DOK Leipzig
THIS, TOO, WILL, BE LIQUID & ATLAS OF DISAPPEARANCE
INT. ANIMATION FILM COMPETITION
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
THIS, TOO, WILL, BE LIQUID In the beginning, there was the sea. In her quietly poetic experimental film, Karolina Malwina Gruschka reflects on her relationship with water. She interweaves autobiographical memories of learning to swim and an instinctive bodily sense of trust with reflections on climate change. The realisation that our own bodies, too, are so deeply connected to the water that covers the Earth – given that they consist of 50% water – is also reflected on a visual level: Gruschka reduces her image material, drawn from found footage and her own holiday photos, to a colour depth of 1 bit, creating a visual field consisting solely of black and white, in which the private and the documented natural world become indistinguishable. Like waves, the images shift from distant blurriness to concrete documentary observations of glaciers calving, unfolding a meditative effect: if we are all going to sink in the end, at least we will all be reunited in the water. (Marie Ketzscher)
Austria 2025, directed by Karolina Malwina Gruschka, 13 min., animated film
POSITIONS
GERMAN PREMIERE
ATLAS OF DISAPPEARANCE Between 1959 and 1981, the Franco regime had more than 33,000 bodies transferred from over 500 mass graves across Spain to the Valle de los Caídos – a monumental mausoleum built to glorify the fascist victory. Decades later, relatives are still searching for the remains of their loved ones. Three families trace the paths of the disappeared, encountering bureaucratic, legal and social obstacles that persist to this day. Drawing on director Manuel Correa’s own research as part of Forensic Architecture – a research agency investigating state and corporate violence – the film meticulously reconstructs what the regime sought to make invisible. Digital maps, community archives, official documents and new forensic technologies reveal what remained hidden for decades. The result is a topography of terror that visualises the extent of systematic violence and brings to light the history buried beneath fascist monumentalism. (Seggen Mikael)
Spain, Norway 2026, directed by Manuel Correa, 84 min., documentary film
With a discussion with “Woche der Kritik”
