A New Beginning: Independent Documentary Film Initiative

docfilm42 launches on realeyz streaming platform

When two German documentary filmmakers, Susanne Dzeik and Peter Ohlendorf in 2018 ran into each other in Berlin and talked about the dire situation of independent documentary filmmakers, Peter started dreaming of a Netflix for alternative, critical and often very low-budget documentary films. That encounter could have remained just that: a dream.

But today we are quite giddy as we go online with our brand-new website designed by filmmaker and webmaster Davide Crivelli. Oliver Standke designed our logo.

Our first six documentaries on our curated docfilm42 VOD channel on realeyz can already be viewed. Months of hard work are finally bearing fruit.

A year of pushing a dream

We are pretty euphoric after a heady year from that first idea to the implementation today.

It was a year of many, many meetings, reaching out to people, endless formal and informal conversations and discussions and brain-storming sessions with like-minded filmmakers, potential partners, supporters. And there were the doomsayers who smiled knowingly, tried to discourage us and were surprised to find us still going a few months later.