Doker is 50 films from 30 countries, 8 nominations in 3 competition programs, an International Jury, discussions with authors, psychologists and journalists, a special IT competition, the "DOK Therapy" section, and a family program for ages 6+ and 12...

From June 18 to 27, the seventh edition of the Doker International Festival will be held at the Moscow cinema center "Oktyabr" with the support of the KARO.Art project. The festival showcases the most outstanding, relevant, and notable examples of auteur documentary cinema. Over ten days, audiences will be able to see and discuss, together with the authors, psychologists, and journalists, 50 new films from 30 countries, all of which will be shown in Russia for the first time.

This year's films are winners and participants of prestigious film festivals from 2020 and 2021, including the Berlin and Venice Film Festivals, TIFF in Toronto, the largest non-fiction film festivals IDFA in Amsterdam, Hot Docs, Dok Leipzig, and many others.

In addition to Moscow, screenings of films from the Doker-2021 program will take place in St. Petersburg, Kazan, Kaliningrad, and Yaroslavl.

The schedule and full program can be found on the festival website midff.ru

Festival trailer:

The Doker Festival consists of two main competition programs — feature-length and short films — after which the International Jury and the audience will award prizes in 8 categories. Simultaneously, screenings of special sections will take place:

• "Let IT Dok!" — the world's only competitive film program about IT technologies
• "DOKer Kids" — a section of non-fiction films for children and family viewing
• A program on mental health "Dok Therapy," all screenings of which will be followed by analysis with psychologists and psychotherapists

A film festival is continuous development, change, and renewal. This year's innovation is the "New School" program, which will showcase works by young talented emerging documentary filmmakers. Students of the "Film and Video Art" program at the HSE School of Design under the guidance of Ivan I. Tverdovsky and participants of Dmitry Kubasov's workshop at the Moscow School of New Cinema are expanding the horizons of documentary cinema, blazing new trails and discovering their own authorial style.

According to the organizers of the Doker Festival, in 2021 the object of study for filmmakers around the world is the individual and their search for their own identity in an era of global migration. The heroes of the new Doker films are frantically trying to compose their own portrait, to declare their true face, their frank image, while documentary filmmakers around the world, in turn, explore the depths of human souls even more intently and meaningfully.

The festival will open in Moscow on June 18 with the premiere of the poignant and tense Canadian thriller "Portrait" — about family secrets, immigration, and art, whose world premiere took place at North America's largest non-fiction film festival "Hot Docs" in Toronto. The film's director is the acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Billy Mintz, a prize-winner and participant in world film festivals, whose films have been broadcast on Netflix, Amazon, Showtime, and other platforms. After the screening, there will be a discussion of the film with the director via video link, moderated by film critic Alisa Taezhnaya. The film is also a participant in the main competition.

In total, the main competition program this year includes 11 powerful stories from all over the world, which will be shown in Russia for the first time. Ticket sales for the screenings are already open on the KARO.Art website.

In the festival's second most important competition program — the short film competition — you can see 15 concise and expressive works. What is the world of an immigrant who has exchanged the comfort of a small country for the frantic pace of a metropolis? How to manage the energy of an entire stadium during a football match? How to stop living in constant fear and overcome past traumas? The authors of these succinct stories from different countries will answer these and many other intricate questions. Russia is represented in the competition by three films: "It's Hard to Be a Friend" by Mikhail Gorobchuk, "Be Healthy" by Tatyana Chistova, and "Escape" by Nikita Popkov.

Those interested in information technology will be delighted by the competitive program of non-fiction films "Let IT Dok!" created jointly with the company LANIT. Documentary filmmakers continue to observe how the world around us is changing and capture the accents in these changes to understand how to adapt to them in the future.

In the IT program 2021: three lively Russian works about data collection ("Ecosystems"), digital immortality ("Death.no"), and cyber love ("Love 3.0"); a gripping drama about a Czech miner who decides to become a programmer (participant in the Main Competition "New Shift"); a shocking film experiment aimed at preventing crimes against children and teenagers in virtual space ("Caught in the Net"); and a heartfelt observation of the inhabitants of a French village who decide to launch their own streaming service ("The Grocer's Son, the Mayor, the Village, and the World...") by world cinema classic Claire Simon.

In the mental health section "Dok Therapy," 7 works will be shown, followed by analysis with professional psychologists and psychotherapists. The main goal of this program is to draw the viewer's attention to human mental problems, their causes, and help find ways to treat them through documentary cinema and real stories of the heroes. The program curators suggest paying attention to the fragility of our psyche and urge us to take care of it as carefully as we take care of our bodies.

Seven films from the "Dok Therapy" section will allow us to deeply reflect on the topic of mental health. The heroes of the films will share their emotional experience in solving mental problems. "The Dancer" tells the story of a guy who got out of prison and is now trying to overcome his drug addiction and love of partying.

The autobiographical film "Threshold" shows the experiences of a director who is the mother of a teenager who decided to undergo a transgender transition. The problems of adaptation and psychological adjustments in society after imprisonment are examined by the Canadian film "Free." Together with the Romanian film "Us Against Us", we explore the fears of inheriting the transmission of mental trauma and schizophrenia from parent to child. The authors of the film "I Loved You" talk about the lack of emotional intelligence and the inability to verbalize feelings and emotions in romantic relationships. And "Mama Aya" conducts an investigation and experiment on whether psychedelic substances can be used to treat mental disorders and addictions. And in the only Russian film in the program, "This Is My Secret, But You All Should Know It", a young actress shares her experience of exploring psychological trauma, undergoing therapy, and the benefits of psychoanalysis.

The youngest viewers, together with their parents, can enjoy films from the "DOKer Kids" section, which will feature smart, apt, and willful documentary cinema for the whole family. The headliners of the program are the French film "Little Ballerinas" (6+) about how difficult it is to grow up in the world of professional dance, and the Russian-Chinese film "You're a Girl" (12+) about a girls' football team from a Muslim village. In total, 7 films will be shown in the "children's" program. The festival will close on June 27 with the large-scale and mesmerizing film "Beautiful: Stories from the Space Station" by director Claire Lewins (UK).

Alongside the film screenings, the festival will host a Business Program consisting of two parts. Public talks, organized in partnership with the Moscow School of New Cinema, will reveal topics that concern documentary filmmakers: the development of different types of docs, their integration onto platforms, and international cooperation. In the creative laboratory "DOK workshop," experts from B2B Doc will conduct an intensive three-day work with selected projects, with the aim of bringing them to the international market. More details about the Business Program can be found at midff.ru/industry.

All film screenings and the festival's work as a whole will take place in compliance with the requirements of Rospotrebnadzor — with all necessary precautions and attention to each other.

We will cover some of the films on our website, so stay tuned for updates!