About Us

Festival / Profil

Since its foundation in 1977, the Duisburg Film Week has been the place for debates on documentary films, their artistic approach and social environment. Every year in November, outstanding documentary films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland are shown at the filmforum cinema on Dellplatz. A broad quality of cinematic creation in a single programme track without parallel screenings and the reflection of the invited positions in the subsequent film discussions characterise the special format of the film week.

Cinema and discussion hall are the spaces in which the public sphere of the film week unfolds: The silent engagement with the films in the dark becomes an eloquent engagement with the others and their arguments in the light of the podium. Experiencing the relationship between the two places, the "Duisburg topography" (Werner Ružička), is what makes the film week special. It offers space for exchange and understanding: about what the documentary images show and about how they are made. The festival is thus characterised by something that is inherent to documentary film itself: reflective showing and informing, and thus an impulse to think further. The minutes of the film discussions are collected in the festival's own online archive Protokult and thus put past discussions into dialogue with each other and continue a piece of discourse history. As part of Duisburger Schule, the film week's offer for colleges and universities, the festival facilitates an intensive exchange between students and filmmakers.