40th DOK.fest München: Filmmaking in Exile

Only in Cinemas 7th – 18th May // @HOME 12th – 25th May

The DOK.fest München celebrates its 40th anniversary. Taking place from 7 to 25 May 2025, the festival presents new films and prestigious competitions. More than 100 top-class documentaries from around the globe, gripping film talks and a wide-ranging supporting programme provide an insight into a plethora of diverse worlds, current issues and stories.

DOK.fest München once again presents works by filmmakers living in exile and currently unable to return to their home countries. The section is a collaboration with the Goethe-Institut in Exile, which offers refugee, exiled, and migrant artists a place where they can continue their artistic work.

“Filmmaking in Exile – Films about Filmmaking Far from Home” aims to provide a platform in Germany for artists from countries where the Goethe-Institut can no longer be active. The section includes five films by directors from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Sudan, and more. In different ways, their films make the experience of exile tangible and reflect on what exile and new beginnings mean for the artistic creative process.

The Filmmaking in Exile section shows the many ways in which the forfeited homeland can be told from exile: from everyday life in the shadow of war (Time to the Target) to the documented journey of a mother into exile (Writing Hawa) to a film project (Khartoum) whose team had to flee in the midst of the war and which could only be completed in exile. The films open up intimate, political, and contradictory perspectives on the filmmakers’ contexts of origin.

+++ Advance ticket sales start on 24 April 2025. Please find the complete film programme of the DOK.fest here. +++