The publicist and filmmaker Fred Gehler is named as Director of the festival. Of the 753 films submitted 226 are screened, in 92 performances.
"And the festival? It used to be the "window to the world", a meeting point of East and West, an event. Since 1989 the festival has somewhat painfully detached itself from its glorious past. Even though the audience was already looking at the world with RTL there was a reluctance to relinquish the greatness of times past, thus destroying what was actually possible: intimate encounters between audience, critics and makers. The new head, Fred Gehler, charts a course of gradual change. [...] The programme was more concise and less indiscriminate than before, the atmosphere friendlier, the discussions more open. And the cinemas fuller. Leipzig must remain in order for change to occur."
[Stefan Reinecke]
Golden Doves
METAL Y MELANCOLIA (METALL UND MELANCHOLIE, Netherlands, Heddy Honigmann)
Silver Doves
PROSCAI SSR (LAST FAREWELL, USSR/Ukraine, Aleksandr Rodnianski)
LES PROTEUERS D´OMBRES ELECTRIQUES (France, Hervé Cohen Renaud)
SRESKI OCEREDNOJ VOJNY (SCHNITTE EINES ANDEREN KRIEGES, Russia, Vitalij Manski)
Mercedes-Benz-Stipendium
METAL Y MELANCOLIA (METALL UND MELANCHOLIE, Netherlands, Heddy Honigmann)