Argentine filmmaker Patricio Plaza will take part in the upcoming edition of the prestigious DOK Co-Pro Market with his animated film Black Diaries, a project that brings back to light the figure of British diplomat of Irish descent Roger Casement and, through animation, exposes the enduring violence of colonialism and the forgotten struggles in Africa and Latin America. The market, which will take place in Leipzig from October 27 to 28, 2025, with complementary online meetings on November 4 and 5, will gather 35 projects selected from a total of 391 submissions from 34 countries, marking a record number of entries and confirming its growing relevance in the international documentary scene.
Black Diaries takes the audience back to the late 19th century, when Casement, a young and idealistic diplomat, is sent to the Congo to represent the interests of the British Crown. There, he comes face to face with the horrors of the crimes committed by the Belgian colonial regime against Indigenous communities. Years later, his path leads him to the Colombian Amazon, where he witnesses similar atrocities perpetrated by British rubber companies. These experiences deepen his disillusionment and force him to look inward, confronting not only colonial violence but also the desires he had long suppressed in a moralistic society. His trajectory transforms him: from a servant of the Empire he becomes one of its fiercest critics, embracing the cause of the oppressed.
In Patricio Plaza’s own words, Casement’s story feels strikingly relevant today: “Since I first encountered him, I’ve been drawn to his contradictions: a colonial official who became an anti-imperialist, a queer man in a moralistic society, both a witness and an agent of history. His life speaks of a world built on genocide, extraction, and the erasure of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. Telling his story today is a way to confront the still-living legacies of colonialism and to question how power has controlled —and continues to control— human lives, representations, and memories.”
Plaza’s film is part of a diverse lineup at DOK Co-Pro Market 2025, where works range from the intimate to the political, from the experimental to the urgent. Among them are projects such as Anything But Love by Zijian Zeng, exploring the search for intimacy in contemporary China; Cheers to Our Lovely Life by Julia Fuhr Mann, blending fiction and documentary to portray queer women on a liberating road trip; and nava mamă by Ana Vijdea, about a trans teenager in a Romanian village scarred by violence. Also standing out is My Aunties by Hazal Hanquet, which brings to light the secret love story of two women in Turkey, shaped by the country’s political and social landscape.
Water, both as a symbol of transformation and as an existential threat, recurs in several selected projects. Hussein Eddeb’s The Birth of Derna is set in the Libyan city devastated by a massive flood, while Carlos Yuri Ceuninck’s Gongon portrays a fishing village in Cape Verde facing environmental erosion and dwindling resources. In the same vein, Welcome to Our Bathhouse by Tommaso Barbetta and Setsuya Kakinuma observes one of Tokyo’s oldest public baths in decline, and See You Soon by Martin Prinoth and Martina Mahlknecht reflects global dynamics through the life of two sailors aboard a German cargo ship.
Political and social engagement remains at the core of the market. Projects like Of the Trees Unmoved by Nino Benashvili, narrating cycles of resistance in Georgia; Anatolia by Jeanne Nouchi, delving into Armenian memory in Turkey; or Speak, Image Speak by Pary El-Qalqili, constructing a counter-memory of Palestine from Germany, testify to the political strength of contemporary documentary cinema. To these is added The Story of My Shirt by Zhanana Kurmasheva, which narrates the life of a garment from the cotton fields of Central Asia to its final resting place in the Chilean desert, offering an original reflection on consumption and global exploitation.
The DOK Co-Pro Market is also known for opening space to animation and archival projects, and Black Diaries is positioned as one of the most promising. Alongside it are titles such as Summer of ’46 by Elsa Perry, a more intimate and family-centered work, and projects that draw on historical materials like The Chef Suffragette by Magdalena Szymków and Sisters by Tereza Bernátková. Others, like Fossil Matter by Tiziana Panizza and That Soul Stealing Device by Giuliano Franco Ochipinti, critically reimagine archival sources.
This year, the market will grant five awards —among them the Unifrance Doc Award, the Saxon Award for the Best Documentary Project by a Female Director, the IMAGO Archive Award, the Jacob Burns Film Center Residency Award, and the No Nation Films Fellowship Award— reaffirming its role as a key platform for international co-production and networking. The selection was carried out by Karim Aitouna, Caroline Kirberg, and Marìa Vera, with support from Brigid O’Shea, Carmina Orozco López, Babette Dieu, and Nadja Tennstedt.
The participation of Black Diaries in this space not only confirms the international projection of Patricio Plaza’s work but also underscores the importance of telling, through animation and documentary, stories that traverse memory, power, and resistance. Its inclusion in the 21st edition of the DOK Co-Pro Market represents an opportunity for Latin American cinema to continue offering critical and necessary perspectives to global discussions on colonialism, identity, and historical justice.
