There will be really big cinema, that’s what you can currently read on posters at the Munich Dok Festival. At the opening of the festival on Wednesday evening there was also great cinema: the Afghan film “Etilaat Roz” was shown in the Deutsches Theater, which with its 1500 seats was converted into a cinema temple. It’s hardly bigger. The genre is booming, there is enormous demand, says festival director Daniel Sponsel. A total of 130 productions from 55 countries will be performed at 21 venues across the city. The festival films can also be streamed online from May 8th.
Not only Sponsel is happy about the documentary boom: “In America one even speaks of the ‘Golden Age of Documentaries'”, says Susanne Binniger. She is a filmmaker herself and co-chair of the AG DOC, the Professional Association for Documentary Film. “Something like that radiates, of course, and there is also a great demand for documentary content in Germany,” says Binninger. They can be seen on streaming platforms or in media libraries, at festivals, on television or in the cinema. According to the Film Funding Agency (FFA), 132 documentaries premiered in cinemas last year. 15 years ago, in 2008, there were only 60 films.
So the supply is large, and so is the demand. So a success story? Not quite: Because the people who make these documentaries for the cinema hardly get any of it. With Pawel Siczek, for example, who is showing his new film “This Kind of Hope” at the Dok-Fest 2023. The mid-forties was born in Poland, grew up in Switzerland and studied at the HFF Munich. Since graduating 15 years ago, he has been making documentary films for the cinema, sometimes accompanying his protagonists for years. However, the research and development are often not paid for, he says at a meeting in Munich’s Bahnhofsviertel. “I can’t make a living from working as a documentary filmmaker. I also do part-time jobs.”
So there is a lot of idealism in his cinematic work, in “This Kind of Hope” he portrays Andrei Sannikov, the former Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus: He was considered a great political talent, but then ran in the presidential election against the dictator Alexander Lukashenko, was arrested and imprisoned. Sannikov has lived in exile in Poland for more than ten years. It’s a film about dictatorships and democracies, about a man in the background who hardly gets any more attention. Pawel Siczek visited him again and again for almost a decade, the first recordings were made in 2013.
The fact that it took so long to make the film is due to the nature of the documentary: you never know what will happen next, such films are open-ended. Reality just can’t be written down in screenplays. That’s what makes things so exciting, which is why the audience flocks to the Dok-Fest. In the Premieres Sunday, May 8th, Siczek’s film is honored in the HFF Audimax for the best music in a documentary film. Andrei Sannikov and his wife Iryna Chalip are also expected. People also go to festivals because of encounters like this. “This Kind of Hope” opened the Solothurn Film Festival in January to great acclaim. The film is a Swiss-German co-production.
According to Pawel Siczek, his German co-production partner was enthusiastic about this, and the editors of RBB (Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg) congratulated him on this success. The filmmaker is now making allegations against the broadcaster: “RBB got the broadcasting rights to my film for five years, they also have media library rights for a limited time. And for a pitifully small amount,” he says. He is not allowed to name the exact amount. But: “It wasn’t even a month’s pension for the ousted RBB director Patricia Schlesinger.”
When Pawel Siczek tells this, his voice trembles; he is a kind man who has taken a beating and feels unfairly treated. That’s why he speaks about it publicly, even if it could have negative consequences for him. But is that just for him? Did his producer just negotiate badly? “This is not a regrettable isolated case, it is a structural problem,” says Doc Fest-Boss Daniel Sponsel. Of course, the public broadcasters could not support every documentary film project – but if they wanted to co-produce and have the broadcasting rights, there would also have to be budgets. “The broadcasters don’t have the money for it. Or it’s spent on something else,” says Sponsel.
As expected, the RBB sees things a little differently: they refer to the many documentaries that have been made with their help in recent years. They also co-produced Siczek’s previous film. There is “huge artistic potential” in the capital region. “Of course we want to do some justice to the many great ideas and material offers. The station is aware of this and, despite all the austerity measures, it has the funds ready for it,” answers the RBB press office SZ-Inquiry.
The biggest problem: the austerity constraints of the broadcasters
This probably names the biggest problem: the need to cut costs on the part of the broadcasters, which is making the editors groan. And so do the filmmakers. Susanne Binniger from AG DOK knows that broadcasters are becoming less committed. She says: “The classic model of cinema co-production is based on the participation of public broadcasters, sponsors and distributors. But this model is reaching its limits.”
In the case of “This Kind of Hope” things are a little more complicated: Since the film is an international co-production with Switzerland, the German participation is lower. In contrast to Pawel Siczek’s previous film, the financial participation was “limited”, the RBB reports. But one is aware of one’s own responsibility: “The goal is always to enable materials that are important to us and that would not be created without our co-participation.”
This can be seen as benevolent or threatening, depending on how you look at it: “When we financed the film in Germany in 2017, it was almost impossible to get money without a broadcaster,” says Siczek. His producer needed a “Letter of Intent” from RBB, without this broadcaster’s declaration of intent it would not work. “Only then did we have real chances with German film funding.” The Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, for example, subsequently participated in his film. As an uninvolved observer, this procedure can also be interpreted as a means of exerting pressure on the broadcasters: They have the upper hand, without them it doesn’t work.
The amalgamation of sponsors and broadcasters has also led to the aforementioned documentary boom in cinemas: “The producers are dependent on the sponsors when it comes to financing long documentaries,” says Susanne Binninger. “That’s why they produce so much for the cinema – because the TV money just isn’t enough.” If, for example, the Bavarian or Hessian film funding supports such projects, they have to start in the cinema – regardless of whether they have a chance in this highly competitive market. “This Kind of Hope” also has a firmly planned theatrical release, later it will be shown on television and in media libraries.
At the opening of the Dok Fest on Wednesday evening, many speeches were held, dealing with program series, partners and prizes. An Afghan group made music while Minister of State Florian Hermann (CSU) and Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) gave an almost identical speech. Hermann said: “The future belongs to the documentary film.” Reiter also confirmed a great future for the genre. You have to be able to afford them.