21. UNDER|DOX 08 – 14 OKT 2026

“The Thing in the Coffin” is an experimental horror film made entirely from digital and analogue footage of old vampire movies. Dozens of Dracula adaptations – including 35mm, 16mm, Super 8, and digital prints – are used and transformed through various forms of material decay and distortion, such as film rot, dyeing, glitch effects, digital manipulation, reprinting, and re-filming. The resulting abstract flow of images offers a unique, sensuous reinterpretation of Bram Stoker’s gothic novel, amplifying its spectral eroticism and haunting aesthetic. Evoking the visual language of silent cinema, “The Thing in the Coffin” unfolds through intertitles (taken from the literary text) and is accompanied by an original score. In the end credits, the list of the films ’cited’ is impressive, making Lichter’s work an archive of film history in itself. – Pesaro Film Festival

Péter Lichter
HU 2026 | German Premiere
62 min | no dialogue

“Sediments” follows the traces of a family, uncovering the entanglements of two dictatorships layer by layer. Through the filmmaker’s conversations with her grandfather, we journey through different epochs of German history – National Socialism, the GDR and the post-reunification era. A film about memory and personal responsibility in times of dictatorship. – Visions du Réel

Laura Coppens
CH, DE 2025
Prix spécial du Jury, Visions du Réel, Gedanken-Aufschluss-Preis, DOK Leipzig
81 min | German

Eddie is an actress who has had her moment of American glory. Accompanied by Valentina, her loyal makeup artist, she accepts the lead role in a science-fiction film being shot in Rome – a film that could very well be her last. – Festival de Cannes

Italian giallo horror flicks, American slasher flicks, Andrzej Zulawski’s ”Possession”, Fellini’s ”Satyricon” and a film-within-a-film described as “Antonioni meets Escape from N.Y.” are some, but clearly not all, of the works referenced in French director Bertrand Mandico’s delirious homage to cinema and the ’80s, ”Roma Elastica”. – Hollywood Reporter

Bertrand Mandico
FR, IT 2026
107 min | French, English, Italian | 35mm

Seeking to decode a final, unanswered invitation, a filmmaker explores why the renowned Lebanese director Jocelyne Saab reached out for a collaboration just two months before her passing. Since his reply can never reach her, the film transforms into a lyrical expedition through the life, political commitments, and artistic vision of a singular voice from the era of revolution. – Locarno Film Festival

Mohanad Yaqubi
PS, BE, QA 2026 | German Premiere
81 min | French, English, Arabic

Those who build the space do not have the right to live there, and the one who has the right to live there cannot find any sign of life. The core political and philosophical stance of the film lies right between these two extremes. – International Cinephile Society

Ivan Marković
RS, FR, DE, KH 2026
76 min | Khmer

In 1991, ethnic tensions between the Serbian minority and the Croatian majority in the region of Slavonia in eastern Croatia came to a head. Josip Reihl-Kir, chief of police of the city of Osijek, tirelessly mediated between the parties. On 1 July 1991, he was assassinated on his way to a peace negotiation in broad daylight on the street. Croatian documentarist Ivan Ramljak analyses the circumstances that fostered an atmosphere of fear and the normalisation of open terror. His film makes no attempt to shed light on the unresolved details of the possible instigators of Reihl-Kir’s murder. Instead, he has produced a long-overdue monument to Josip Reihl-Kir as one of the last advocates for peace. The meticulously researched early 1990s material from the Croatian television archive is contrasted with current statements from five carefully selected contemporary witnesses in voice-over, opening up entirely new perspectives on the beginnings of the war in Slavonia. – DOK Leipzig

Ivan Ramljak
HR 2025
Golden Dove, DOK Leipzig
100 min | Croatian

A young French woman believes she has arrived in San Sebastián in search of mirages that have appeared along the coast. On a boat, she meets a Portuguese woman (Rita Azevedo Gomes), who tells her the story of two sisters who once lived in that same city. One story contains another; an old painting depicts one of the women and a man, but in motion; and binoculars used the wrong way round open doors onto images that are not there.
From its very title, ”The Mirage” is a film about the act of looking, about the visible and about what our gaze constructs from external reality. It is also a film built around long sequence shots that open themselves to the unexpected and grow in complexity as the narrative advances: reflections within reflections, variations and versions of the same character, and even different temporalities coexising within a single sequence shot. Thus, in a certain way, the entire film appears as one great mirage. – FID Marseille

Bingham Bryant
PT, US, DE 2026 | German Premiere
70min | Portuguese, Spanish, French | 16mm