DOK Leipzig 2026 has come to a close. For GRAP, the festival began with our member Monika Preischl taking part in a talk on AI and ethics for archives, producers and archive researchers.

This year’s Archive Market welcomed a growing number of archives presenting their collections, including first-time participants Mauritius Images (Germany) and Sky News (United Kingdom). Our member Mona El-Bira spoke on a panel about the red lines in using archive material in documentary film, and Elizabeth Klink presented our colleague Solveig Hansen’s keynote on clearing music for documentaries. Throughout the day, GRAP members also offered free consultations to producers from around the world.

Finally, GRAP presented its Archive Award for the first time. The inaugural award goes to Dala, a project in development by director Almira Saifullina, produced by Kristina Mikhailova (Kazakhstan) in co-production with EuroArctic Media Group (Sweden). The GRAP Archive Award honours an outstanding project in which archival material plays a central role. It comes with a five-hour consulting package with one of GRAP’s professional archive producers.