DOK-WERK is a Berlin-based film cooperative founded by filmmakers Daniela Michel and Alexander Kleider in 2004.
For more than twenty years, we have been creating award-winning documentary films about social change, human connection and people searching for new ways of living. Our films explore questions of work, education, love, gender equality and community. We are particularly drawn to social utopias — people and ideas that do not simply imagine a different future, but begin to live it.
From alternative schools and basic income experiments to participatory art projects and communities in transition, our documentaries follow people who challenge existing systems and search for new possibilities.
The future does not happen on its own. It begins with people willing to do things differently.
Daniela Michel
Writer · Director · Producer · Editor
Daniela Michel originally wanted to become many things at once: an artist, a journalist, a traveller between worlds. She went on to study Art, Communications and International Relations in London.
Daniela lives in Berlin, her heart is in Barcelona, and her family roots are in Budapest.
Since 2004, she has been making documentaries for cinema and television with DOK-WERK. Her films explore social change, human connection and the quiet moments in which people begin to imagine life differently.
Daniela is less interested in simple answers than in what happens in between: encounters, friction, vulnerability and the point at which something begins to shift. Many of her films follow people who question existing realities and try out alternative visions of the future.
Her documentaries have been shown internationally, won several awards and received a nomination for the German Film Award.
Alexander Kleider
Writer · Director · Cinematographer · Producer
Alexander Kleider discovered his love of filmmaking as a child, shooting his first films with his father’s Super 8 camera.
Today, he is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer and producer based in Cologne and Berlin.
Since 2004, he has been creating documentaries for cinema and television with DOK-WERK. His films explore social change, human connection and the ways individual lives are shaped by wider social realities.
Many of his documentaries follow people and communities who question existing systems and try out alternative futures — from basic income and education to love, belonging and new forms of living together.
His films have been shown internationally and received several awards, including nominations for the German Film Award and the Max Ophüls Prize.