Shortly after German reunification attendance figures dropped, with just 5,500 people coming in 1993; however, they quickly picked up and in 2008 the festival had more than 27,000 attendees.

DOK Leipzig is part of the Doc Alliance – a creative partnership between 7 key European documentary film festivals.

The initiative for the 1st All-German Leipzig Festival of Cultural and Documentary Films came from West German journalist and film critic Ludwig Thomés who, in the course of a discussion with the East German filmmakers club, Club der Filmschaffenden der DDR, proposed establishing a festival in Leipzig both as a counterpart to the Mannheim Culture and Documentary Filmweek (now known as International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg) and as a platform for productions from East Germany.

In addition, Peter Ulbrich, Stanley Forman and Joris Ivens appealed to all documentary film makers to give their support to Vietnam and to inform the civilian population of the behavior of the US Army.

In 1973 Ronald Trisch took over the post of director and in 1974 Jane Fonda attended to promote the Vietnam film "Introduction to the Enemy".

Between 1960 and 1989 the selection of the retrospectives occurred in cooperation with Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR, the East German Film Archive.