Seit über vier Jahrzehnten lädt das Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest ein, Dokumentarfilm, Videokunst und Medieninstallationen als Gemeinschaftserlebnis zu erleben — mit internationalem Programm, regionalem Fokus und einem engagierten Rahmenprogramm. In einem typischen Jahr werden hunderte filmische Beiträge aus aller Welt gezeigt — vom Kurzfilm bis zum Langdokumentarfilm — ergänzt durch Ausstellungen, Diskurse, Performance und audiovisuelle Experimente. Mit seiner Mischung aus regional verwurzeltem Engagement (z. B. Nordhessen-Schwerpunkt), internationaler Ausrichtung und offener, partizipativer Ästhetik leistet das Festival einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Vielfalt der deutschen und europäischen Dokumentar- und Medienfilmszene.
Auf Sonar entdecken
SSRC
20 Min., Dokumentarfilm , Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmShot in the suburbs of South Los Angeles, Yalda Afsah's short film SSRC focuses on the relationship between trained pigeons and their keepers, exploring mutual dependence and care, domestication and dominance—and ultimately the agency of human and non-human beings.
The Effect of Cannonry on Thunderclouds
30 Min., Dokumentarfilm , Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmIn 2016, Germany recorded more potential tornados than ever before. At the same time, weather tropes flooded screens and feeds: shit storms, data floods, refugee waves. The film reads images as documents, fictions and instruments of control — where fear, manipulation and prediction begin to merge.
['d℧ŋkl'' dɔɪ̯ʧlant]
13 Min., Dokumentarfilm , Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmA ghost-train ride through the former industrial region of Halle/Bitterfeld, a place trying to shed its reputation. Just beneath the newly polished surface, the recent past remains deposited. The subjective camera of the filmmakers, born in “Dark Germany,” stumbles in search of the right distance.
![['d℧ŋkl'' dɔɪ̯ʧlant]](https://sonar.film/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/poster-dd3--600x849.jpg)
We wanted to kill all nasty ones
91 Min., DokumentarfilmA deadpan, reality-based satire about the improbable purchase and impossible sale of a bunker hill — a film poised between rigorous documentary observation and dryly comic science fiction.
Fronteras Visibles
16 Min., Dokumentarfilm , Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmDuring an artist residency in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, Christian Diaz Orejarena questions the role of Western artists as cultural producers in economically marginalised contexts. Taking the form of a video diary, the film reflects on the circumstances in which the music video “Fronteras Visibles” was made.
LAKE OF FIRE
11 Min., Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmThe third chapter of the LAST THINGS trilogy explores the fear of death, its close association with hell in Christian belief, and the way this worldview further inflames visions of a climate-driven “hell on Earth”.
BITING THE DUST
13 Min., Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmThe second chapter of the LAST THINGS trilogy examines Christian ideas of the afterlife, asking which living beings are admitted to heaven—and which are shut out.
Buck Fever
6 Min., Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmBUCK FEVER assembles a collage of amateur footage in which hunters capture the tension before an animal is shot and the release that follows, proudly posing for the camera beside their kill.
Zuhause ist dort, wo die Sternfrüchte sauer sind
24 Min., Dokumentarfilm , KurzfilmFilmmaker Huy Nguyen chronicles a transcontinental relationship with his grandparents, shaped by intimacy and distance. Speaking with them for the first time about a family taboo—love and emotional connection—he embarks on a personal journey that brings the intergenerational tensions within his family to the surface.
Sandgirl
84 Min., DokumentarfilmAn award-winning and beautifully animated journey into the creative world of Veronika Raila. As a child her IQ tested as zero – she now creates as a poet and cross-platform artist.
Last Year in Utopia
73 Min., Dokumentarfilm , ExperimentalfilmLast Year in Utopia documents an experimental set-up: a staged group media experiment, isolated from the outside world, is reconstructed on the site where the original events unfolded. The boundaries between autonomy and heteronomy dissolve in new role assignments as the film makes the power structure behind the artificially created utopia visible.
Transient Witness
47 Min., Experimentalfilm , SpielfilmTransient Witness unfolds through the eyes of three protagonists: Christina, the manager of an art collection; Maurizio, an art mover; and Präsens, the collector's dog.
Inverse geometry
10 Min., Experimentalfilm , KurzfilmInverse Geometry unfolds a fictional story about the crossing of intimate boundaries. At the centre of its cinematic inquiry is the domestic interior: its furnishings, its objects, and the ways in which they are spatially inscribed within architecture.
