| Special | Duisburg Film Week |

UNEASE IN DOCUMENTARIES
ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DUISBURG FILM WEEK
By Patrick Holzapfel

Ich denke oft an Hawaii by Elfi Mikesch © Deutsche Kinemathek / Elfi MIkesch

Best thing to do would be to leave the cinema. You can hardly stand the film anymore; you look away, and would actually like to shout at the screen. Why isn’t anyone complaining? How can they show something like that? What cheek! But you are still sitting there and can’t look away. After all, aversion goes hand in hand with fascination. At some point, the film is over. And suddenly you realize that what you thought was uncomfortable before, is in fact posing questions about your own viewing habits.

The Duisburg Film Week, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, has exposed itself to unease since the very start. Given its focus on documentary forms that engage with a world that is uncomfortable at times, this is unavoidable.  Duisburg’s defining culture of discussion—after every film, an hour-long discussion takes place in a separate space—allows films’ disruptive and disturbing aspects to become part of the shared, active labor of perception. Reflecting on and emotionally processing what one has just experienced in the cinema reveals the need to negotiate ethical, formal, and representation-critical questions. What can we agree on? Where does an imposition generate productive friction? And when does it become too much?

We present four examples from the festival’s history: a poeticized perception of a life of poverty in Ich denke oft an Hawaii (1978) by Elfi Mikesch, the possibly obscene revelation of taboo themes in Baby, I will Make You Sweat (1994) by Birgit Hein, the imbalance between protagonist and filmmaker negotiated in front of the camera in Uncomfortably Comfortable (2021) by Maria Petschnig, and the disturbingly intrusive closeness to the protagonists in Das Block (2007) by Stefan Kolbe and Chris Wright.

Unease is subject to cultural and historical contexts. A scene that was considered offensive just yesterday, can already be viewed as ordinary tomorrow—and vice versa. Representations of sexuality and violence are simply the more widely debated examples in this regard. What’s “too much” must be measured in the context of the present moment. As a rule, films that come too close to us, that lastingly disturb or unsettle us, challenge us to see things in a new way. They change our view of cinema, and at the same time, of the world.

“The Duisburg Film Week will celebrate its anniversary in 2026: 50 years of documentary films and discussions in a collectively agreed festival format—50 years of the present. We’re flattered and delighted to be celebrating with our Austrian friends. The program presents us with challenging—and thereby galvanizing—films that confront viewers’ habits of seeing and ways of looking at the world. Documentaries that understand cinema as a place where what may initially seem unbearable can become the subject of a new perception.” — Alexander Scholz | Festival Director Duisburg Film Week