UNDERDOX is: meeting the changing states of documentary evidence, in feature film, video art and documentary itself. It isn’t a matter of documenting reality, it is the matter of experimenting “film” on the pitch of reality.
UNDERDOX has been founded in 2006 by film critic Dunja Bialas and theater operator and film collector Bernd Brehmer (Werkstattkino). The international film festival for documents and experiments shows cross-over works putting together the different genres of documentary and experimental film, fiction and artistic film. Since 2014 the biennial competition VIDEODOX shows a selection of German video art (award: 1000 euros).
film entries
Submissions to all the sections (feature films, artist in focus, focus on a film country, lost & found, short experimental programme, short documentary programme) can be done informally on sending an online link of the submitted film to info@underdox-festival.de, including some words why would you think your film would fit to the UNDERDOX festival. Next deadline: 15 July 2026
team
UNDERDOX
Dunja Bialas | director and curator of UNDERDOX
Studied Romance languages and general and comparative literature in Munich and Paris. Editor of the film magazine artechock since 2000. From 2002 to 2013, she was a curator at Dok.Fest Munich, most recently for the international competition. In 2006, she founded the international film festival UNDERDOX with Bernd Brehmer. From 2013 to 2023, she was spokesperson for the board of the Association of German Film Critics. In 2014, she founded the VIDEODOX Förderpreis – Biennale für Videokunst aus Bayern (VIDEODOX Award – Biennial for Video Art from Bavaria). In addition to her work as a film curator and critic, she teaches “Practice of Film Criticism” at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
Bernd Brehmer | director and curator of UNDERDOX
He is one of the programming directors of Munich based Werkstattkino since 1995. He established the internationally esteemed film archive and contributes to several festivals as programming advisor. In 1991 he founded the “24” film magazine and was general manager of the “Exit distribution agency” from 2003 until 2006 that focused on documentary films as well as independent german productions. Together with Dunja Bialas he founded UNDERDOX in 2006.
Benedikt Guntentaler | Young People’s Choice
Bachelor’s degree in theatre studies and philosophy (“On the aesthetic form analysis of early Sören Kierkegaard”) at LMU Munich. He is currently completing his master’s degree in film and media culture studies and literary studies. Film and theatre critic at artechock since 2024.
VIDEODOX
Matthias von Tesmar | VIDEODOX co-director
He lives and works as a freelance author and curator in Munich, Germany. Studied New German Literature, Philosophy and Dramatic Science. From 2000 to 2004 and 2006 to 2010 he was head of the video library and artist archive of lothringer13/spiegel, Munich. In 2015 he curated the VIDEODOX retrospective “spiegel-Mediathek der Lothringer13” at the Munich GALERIE DER KÜNSTLER*INNEN. Since 2017, together with Dunja Bialas, he is artistic director of the VIDEODOX Förderpreis, the biennial for Bavarian video art.
Anna Schellkopf | VIDEODOX curator and editor
After a Bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Archaeology, she studied art history, supplementing art historical methods and topics with a focus on media and film studies. After her Bachelor’s thesis on “Star Wars” and the reciprocal relationship between pop culture and image politics, she has been pursuing a Master’s degree in Art History since 2024. From 2016 to 2023 she worked in the video studio of a technology corporation, since 2023 as an author of occasional festival coverage on Artechock.
Nora Moschüring | VIDEODOX curator
While studying art history and cultural management, she continuously made popcorn in cinemas, watched quite a lot of films and wrote about them. After three years at Dok.fest Munich, she worked as an artistic-scientific assistant in the documentary film department at the HfbK Hamburg and the HFF Munich. She is currently studying at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and coordinating KiKS, the Children’s Culture Summer. She has been writing for Artechock for years and supervises documentary film projects.
Florian Geierstanger | VIDEODOX curator
The artist, filmmaker, curator and web developer was involved in UNDERDOX (2010-2015) as a curator and graphic designer. He lives and works in Munich.
Website
public relation
Janna Lihl | social media
After her studies in Communication & Multimedia Design, Janna Lihl worked as a designer for one year until she decided to return to film. After her master’s degree in cultural media research with a focus on moving images, she worked as a film mediator. In addition to working for a film production company, she writes film texts and is a freelance journalist for a Munich magazine. Since 2017 she does social media for UNDERDOX and has been working as program assistant of UNDERDOX.
Gabi Sabo | public relations
The theater scholar worked during and after her studies as a freelance director, tour manager and dramaturge, as a journalist and radio presenter. Together with Karin Platzer she founded the PR agency “die kulturbananen” in 1997. Since 2019 she has been responsible for the press relations for UNDERDOX.
manifesto
- We show equally documentary, experimental, essay and fiction films and their conceivable intermediate forms.
- We project movies in their original format. 16mm, 35mm and digital formats are equally welcome. We don’t prefer any cinematic format or would exclude any movie because of its screening format.
- We embrace overlong feature films. In times where television series are presented at film festivals as if they contribute as a cinematic format, the original cinematographic long form applies to us as a committed statement for our program.
- We don’t care about film competitions. We however care about the internal architecture and dialogue developed by the compiled film program. Lines of flight, branches, junctions and echoes act on the single film as a reinforcer of its art form.
- External parameters are not crucial to the programming. Relevance, production country, film length, big names are in themselves no criteria.
- It is not about getting the biggest audience (and continously growing), nor about “industry”. Important is to present the chosen films to an open minded audience. Our programming contains the propositions for a different cinematography.
- Festivals need multilaterality. Festivals invite films to be shown to a new audience, on the other hand festivals would be obsolete if the filmmakers wouldn‘t participate. Neither the production or world sales companies, film directors nor the festival people should therefore exploit the other side. We pay screening fees within reasonable bounds of our low budget and expect the World Sales Companies to comply with our requests.
- We have a strict door policy. We select the movies on the big screen, either at festivals or together at our programming meetings. The films are selected by a committee consisting of filmmakers, cinema
operators or film critics. - We practice the freedom of showing films that already premiered outside of Munich.
- We are no mavericks. We maintain partnerships and friendship to other festivals with a similar program philosophy. We are in exchange with the Viennale, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Festival of Marseille, the Forum of Berlinale, with Bildrausch in Basel, and the Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival.
networking
Blogs and Film Magazines
- artechock Filmmagazin – Munich film magazine with festival reports ad film reviews (in German)
- Die Bleiwüste – Texts, thoughts and debates around documentary themes (in German)
- Cargo Film / Medien / Kultur – Web magazine of the Cargo magazine (in German)
- Cargo-Container – Blog of the Cargo magazine (in German)
- critic.de – Film magazine with detailed reviews of UNDERDOX films (in German)
- Missing Image / Feed Agregator – Blog about films we are missing (in English)
- New Filmkritik – Blog with detailed text archive (in German)
- Independencia – Blog with detailed festival reports (in French)
- Parallelfilm – Blog of filmmaker Christoph Hochhäusler (in German)
- Revolver – Blog of the magazine of the same title (in German)
- Sigi Götz Entertainment – Fanzine around filmmaker Sig(g)i Götz-Rothemund and other personalities of hidden film history
Festivals
- Bildrausch Filmfest Basel
- Crossing Europe Filmfestival Linz
- FID Marseille – Festival International du Documentaire de Marseille
- IFFR – International Filmfestival Rotterdam
- Indielisboa – International Independent Film Festival Lissabon
- Les Inattendus – Festival de cinéma (très) indépendant, Lyon
- Pesaro – Internationales Festival des Neuen Films
- Torino – Torino Film Festival
- Viennale – Vienna International Filmfestival
- berlinerpool – International Platform for video art, editor of Monday-News, weekly entry appels for international festivals
The Festival’s Artists
- Ossi Fink – artist 2006
- Cora Piantoni – photographer 2007-2012
- Axel Recht – photographer 2013
- Nicola Müller – artist 2014
- Friedemann Roll – photo artist 2015
- Nana Botella – photographer 2023