CPH:DOX unveils its full film programme
200 new films. 76 world premieres. 59 competition titles in six international competitions. CPH:DOX is ready to present the full film programme with a diverse selection of films of artistic quality and contemporary relevance.
Several films focusing on Ukraine and Russia will be premiering in CPH:DOX’s main competition, Dox:Award.
Today, CPH:DOX reveals this year’s full film programme with more than 200 international documentaries that speaks volumes about the world we live in.
After two years of COVID-shutdown, CPH:DOX will finally return to the Danish movie theaters. CPH:DOX 2022 will run as a hybrid festival with film screenings and industry events in Copenhagen from April 23 to May 3, 2022. In addition, a selection of films will be made available for streaming in Denmark from April 1-10.
“Right now, our thoughts are first and foremost with the people in Ukraine, a sovereign European state unlawfully invaded by an autocratic regime. In Kyiv, the great festival Docudays UA was supposed to happen around the same time as CPH:DOX. That is no longer possible. In that perspective, it feels like an incredible privilege to be able to gather the international documentary community as well as the audience in Denmark around a cultural manifestation like CPH:DOX. A documentary film festival is not only a celebration of cinema, it is also an opportunity to critically reflect on reality, to engage in democratic dialogue and to discuss how our views of the world have consequences – sometimes fatal consequences. With CPH:DOX 2022, we strive to create a space for these hugely important discussions”, says Niklas Engstrøm, Artistic Director of CPH:DOX.
Art, Science and Society in focus
Thematically, CPH:DOX will be exploring three important tracks in the programme: Art, Science, and Society. During the festival, audiences in Copenhagen can experience the tracks on three new venues around Copenhagen – each with a dedicated pop-up cinema where film screenings will be accompanied by debates, talks, concerts, performances and a number of special events.
Focus on Russia and Ukraine
With the war raging in Ukraine right now, this year’s CPH:DOX will offer a number of brand new films that go behind the news flow and provide new perspectives on the reality in Russia and Ukraine. Here, the audience will get the chance to experience the story of the famous Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned with the nerve gas Novichok and is now imprisoned in Russia. The films ‘Navalny’, ‘Holidays’, and ‘Outside’ have all been selected for the main competition Dox:Award. CPH:DOX will also screen the world premiere of ‘Novorossiya’, a new film focusing on the lives of people in war-torn Eastern Ukraine. The focus programme includes the critically acclaimed Danish Sundance winner ‘A House Made of Splinters’ about an orphanage in the eastern part of Ukraine, as well as a number of other films about Russia and Ukraine.
Competition line-up
The five competitions, that will all be evaluated by an international jury, are: Dox:Award, New:Vision, F:act Award, Nordic:Dox Award, and Next:Wave Award. The full competition line-up consists of 59 titles and features 39 world premieres, 16 international premieres and 4 European premieres.
The programme pays attention to gender representation with 50% of the films being directed or co-directed by female directors. The selection both includes films from established, international, award-winning directors as well as new voices across the five competitions.
See the full list of competition titles below.
DOX:AWARD
12 films including 6 world premieres, 5 international premieres and 1 European premiere.
Into the Ice (Lars Ostenfeld, Denmark/Germany, World Premiere)
A grand, cinematic adventure on the Greenland ice sheet with three leading scientists in search of what the ice can tell us about our climate, our past and possible future.
The Eclipse (Nataša Urban, Norway, World Premiere)
With the solar eclipse in 1999 as her mirror image, an exiled film artist turns her analogue film camera on her family in ex-Yugoslavia to map how a dark past remains embedded in the present.
The Fall (Andreas Koefoed, Denmark, World Premiere)
A 10-year-old girl miraculously survives a fall from the fifth floor. Six years later, she is looking to escape the trauma. A subtle, sensitive coming-of-age film about a very unusual young woman.
Fire of Love (Sara Dosa, Canada/United States, International Premiere)
A unique, poetic and visually stunning adventure film about a French scientist couple, based entirely on their own footage from travels in search of erupting volcanoes in the 1970s and 80s.
Girl Gang (Susanne Regina Meures, Switzerland, World Premiere)
A contemporary fairy tale about a 14-year-old influencer and her biggest fan. But life as a social media star has a shadow side that the adrenaline, fame and free sneakers can’t make up for.
Hide and Seek (Victoria Fiore, United Kingdom/Italy, International Premiere)
Four furious years in one of Naples’ toughest neighbourhoods, where all three generations of a single family live on the edge of the law. Can the family’s youngest son break the dark legacy?
Holidays (Antoine Cattin, Switzerland, World Premiere)
Russia’s record-high number of holidays are celebrated at an upbeat balalaika pace and with black humour in a lively mosaic of impressions from life in the vast, inscrutable country in the East.
Midwives (Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing, Myanmar, European Premiere)
A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide.
Navalny (Daniel Roher, United States, International Premiere)
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnyi is both detective and supposed murder victim in a brave docu-thriller about the assassination attempt at his life. Timely, urgent, nerve-wrecking.
Outside (Olha Zhurba, Ukraine/Denmark/Netherlands, World Premiere)
As a 13-year-old boy, he became the poster boy of the Ukrainian revolution. Now Roma is back on the streets with nothing in his pocket but a lighter and a knife as a new conflict looms.
They Made Us the Night (Fernando Delgado, Mexico, International Premiere)
Supernatural visions and indigenous folk myths intrude in an unpredictable and dreamlike Mexican film about a family living in the shadow of the apocalypse. A living, organic work.
Under the Sky Shelter (Diego Acosta, Chile, International Premiere)
Chilean debut in sparkling, analogue black and white. A lone shepherd crosses rivers, forests and cliffs with thousands of sheep. As he loses himself in the mountains, dreams appear like ghosts.
NEW:VISION AWARD
16 films (shorts and features) including 11 world premieres, 3 international premieres and 2 European premieres.
Parkland of Decay and Fantasy (Chenliang Zhu, China, World Premiere)
Technology and spirituality are parallel forces in an abandoned and possibly haunted Chinese amusement park taken over by outsider artists.
Stinking Dawn (Liam Gillick & Gelitin, Austria/United Kingdom, World Premiere)
A social experiment-turned-musical performed by Liam Gillick and the radical performance art group Gelitin at Kunsthalle Wien.
What About China? (Trinh Minh-ha, United States/China, World Premiere)
Based on footage shot by the artist in China in 1993 and 1994, Trinh’s essay reflects on the rich history of Chinese thought – and of cinema itself.
The Worm (Ed Atkins, Denmark, United States, Germany, International Premiere)
Ed Atkins presents a telephone call with his mother. She is heard but not seen, while Atkins is rendered, by way of performance-capture technology, as a digital avatar.
Everything But The World (Lauren Boyle/DIS Magazine, United States, World Premiere)
A non-linear, natural history documentary about us — homo sapiens.
Abyss (Jeppe Lange & Google’s Image Recognition AI, Denmark, World Premiere)
A mind-bending video work created as a chain of 10.000 stil images found through Google’s reverse image search.
Mangrove School (Filipa César & Sónia Vaz Borges, Portugal/Germany/France, International Premiere)
During Guinea-Bissau’s struggle for independence from Portugal in 1965, education became a means of anti-colonial resistance. The history of a movement, narrated as a documentary fable.
Congress of Idling Persons (Bassem Saad, Lebanon, European Premiere)
Five interlocutors examine a cartography of protest, crisis, humanitarian and mutual aid, migrant labour, and Palestinian outsider status.
We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands (Younes Ben Slimane, Tunisia, World Premiere)
A sombre and enigmatic work that explores the inner life of people and objects, as a single figure roams a burial ground in a twilight zone between reality and dream.
Echodrom (Gudrun Krebitz, Austria, World Premiere)
Dark, dreamy and delirious mixed-media work contained within the frame of a partly animated film, guided by the words and voices of its invisible participants.
Dear Darkness (Antoinette Zwirchmayr, Austria, International Premiere)
A mesmerizingly beautiful 16mm work centering around three women and former best friends who meet again after 20 years.
Constant (Beny Wagner/Sasha Litvintseva, Germany/United Kingdom, World Premiere)
A hallucinatory journey through the social and political histories of measurement. From early modern European land enclosures to the current frontier of Big Science.
Nicolae (Mihai Grecu, Romania, European Premiere)
Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu reappears as a hologram in a small village in a dryly witty intervention that blurs the boundaries between past and present.
Honeycomb Image/Archive Cladding (Tinne Zenner/Eva La Cour, Denmark, World Premiere)
A montage of text, image and sound that explores the intertwined histories of an administrative building in Copenhagen with a marble mine in Greenland.
Through a Shimmering Prism, We Made a Way (Rhea Storr, Bahamas/United Kingdom, World Premiere)
Three sisters move through public/political space – a square, bridge, garden and hill – in this exploration of Black diaspora.
When There Is No More Music To Write, and other Roman Stories (Eric Baudelaire, France, International Premiere)
With the work of improvisational composer Alvin Curran as a guiding principle, Baudelaire creates a triptych that investigates the parallels between artistic theory and political practice.
F:ACT AWARD
10 films including 6 world premieres and 4 international premieres.
Black Mambas (Lena Karbe, Germany/France, World Premiere)
For the South African women of the Black Mambas, the fight against poachers is also a fight for women’s liberation and empowerment.
The Deal (Chiara Sambuchi, Germany, World Premiere)
Investigative documentary about how the arms of the Nigerian mafia reach far into Europe and use religious pressure to keep trafficked women in prostitution.
Rules of War (Guido Hendrikx, Netherlands, World Premiere)
A Red Cross delegate and a group of hardcore South Sudanese soldiers clash in their views of war and conflict. From the mind behind the CPH:DOX hit ‘A Man and a Camera’.
The Territory (Alex Pritz, Denmark/United States/Brazil, International Premiere)
A network of government-backed farmers is eating into indigenous territory in the Brazilian rainforest, but a local activist and his team are fighting back with a video camera as a weapon.
This Stolen Country of Mine (Marc Wiese, Ecuador/Germany, World Premiere)
Chinese mining in Ecuador’s mountains sets the stage for an epic battle between eco-guerrillas and a corrupt government in an intensely dramatic feature.
TikTok, Boom. (Shalini Kantayya, United States, International Premiere)
There’s more than dollars and yen at stake as data flows from TikTok back to Chinese server parks. A critical but tech-positive film about the invisible influence of social media.
The Chocolate War (Miki Mistrati, Denmark, World Premiere)
One man’s fight against an industry of cocoa producers that ruthlessly exploits child labour in Ivory Coast plantations. Investigative guerrilla journalism meets intense courtroom drama.
A French Revolution (Emmanuel Gras, France, International Premiere)
A modern protest movement seen from the inside in a timely film with an eminent eye for detail that observes the methods, aims and inner contradictions of the French Yellow Vests.
A Taste of Whale (Vincent Kelner, France, World Premiere)
Faroese whalers have hunted pilot whales for centuries, but today international activists are condemning old traditions. A sober look at the dilemmas of a seemingly two-sided conflict.
To the End (Rachel Lears, United States, International Premiere)
A shared dream of passing a New Green Deal leads three young female activists into the centre of power, where cynicism and demands for change collide.
NORDIC:DOX AWARD
12 films including 9 world premieres and 3 international premieres.
Electric Malady (Marie Lidén, United Kingdom, World Premiere)
Allergic to electronics and isolated in the Swedish wilderness in a homemade turtle shell of thick blankets. Meet 40-year-old William, whose mysterious condition is not recognised by the world.
The Happy Worker (John Webster, Finland, World Premiere)
Stressed? Burnt out? You’re not alone! With black humour and biting irony, we get the incredible story of how modern working life became its own worst enemy – and how to change it.
Mr. Graversen (Michael Graversen, Denmark, World Premiere)
After years of substance abuse, Michael’s father returns to his life, but an old family trauma continues to haunt the Graversen family.
TSUMU – Where Do You Go With Your Dreams? (Kasper Kiertzner, Denmark/Sweden, World Premiere)
Lars, Eino and Thomas are fighting for a better future for themselves and their friends in Tasiilaq in eastern Greenland. A youth film about hope, dreams and the right to be yourself.
All that Remains to be Seen (Julie Bezerra Madsen, Denmark/Finland, World Premiere)
What would you like to see if you couldn’t see any more? A blind mother and her seven-year-old son teach each other how to navigate the world as his vision slowly fades and a new life awaits.
Behind The Swedish Model (Viktor Nordenskiöld, Sweden, International Premiere)
Behind the scenes of the first corona wave in Sweden, where state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell went solo on a global scale – and became an involuntary public figure overnight.
Daughters (Jenifer Malmqvist, Sweden/Denmark, World Premiere)
A sensitive and poignant film about three young girls’ grieving process after their mother’s suicide, told over a period of 10 years.
Just Animals (Saila Kivelä/Vesa Kuosmanen, Finland, International Premiere)
Adrenaline-fueled activist animal welfare film told in the first person, about becoming politically aware – and about how your own idealism can turn against you when the world won’t listen.
Karaoke Paradise (Einari Paakkanen, Finland, International Premiere)
A heartwarming Finnish feel-good film about how karaoke culture has taken hold where you least expected it: in our notoriously introverted sister country in the cold north.
The Last Human (Ivalo Frank, Denmark/Greenland, World Premiere)
Life on Earth begins and ends with Greenland. Researcher Minik Rosing’s landmark discovery of the first life contrasts with the melting ice masses in Ivalo Frank’s tribute to her homeland.
Light upon Light (Christian Suhr, Egypt/Denmark, World Premiere)
A philosophical journey from Cairo, along the Nile and into the desert in search for what light means as a political and religious concept in post-revolutionary Egypt.
No Place Like Home (Myrid Carten, Ireland, World Premiere)
A young woman confronts her own story as an adopted child from Sri Lanka. Her quest turns into a hunt for the truth in a morass of forged documents, corruption and family trauma.
NEXT:WAVE AWARD
10 films including 7 world premieres, 1 international premieres and 2 European premieres.
Kash Kash – Without Feathers We Can’t Live (Lea Najjar, Germany/Lebanon/Qatar, World Premiere)
A vital, cinematic snapshot of Lebanon and its chaotic state, where the flat rooftops high above the city streets become a hopeful haven for people practising a ritualistic pigeon sport.
Moosa Lane (Anita Hopland, Pakistan/Denmark/Norway, World Premiere)
A personal family epic, where Danish-Pakistani director Anita Mathal Hopland looks back at the history of her two families over 15 years in Karachi and Copenhagen.
No Place for You in Our Town (Nikolay Stefanov, Bulgaria, World Premiere)
The hard life of hardcore football hooligans in a dilapidated mining town where operations have long since shut down and the future looks bleak. But is there a way out of the fanaticism?
Nothing Compares (Kathryn Ferguson (Kathryn Ferguson, UK/Ireland, European Premiere)
‘I didn’t want to be a pop star, I just wanted to scream’. Iconic singer Sinéad O’Connor’s artistic breakthrough in the ’90s has political resonance today as much as ever.
The Pawnshop (Łukasz Kowalski, Poland, World Premiere)
A couple of resourceful misfits runs the biggest pawnshop in Poland. When their finances collapse and love begins to falter, they set out to fight the hardest battle of their lives.
Riotsville, USA (Sierra Pettengill, United States, International Premiere)
A movie set built by the US military in the 1960s is the object of study in an archival-based, modern essay about the history of racism and rebellion in America.
We Met in Virtual Reality (Joe Hunting, United Kingdom, European Premiere)
Entirely shot in the hallucinatory virtual world of VRChat during the first lockdown, this visually singular but deeply human film explores the intersection between technology and emotions.
An Eternity of You and Me (Sanne This, Denmark, World Premiere)
A touching and humorous tale of gender roles and two people’s struggle to fulfil their dream of having a child – with the director herself in the female lead.
Sami’s Odysseys (Robin Dimet, France/Ethiopia, World Premiere)
In Ethiopia’s labyrinthine capital, a recluse sits translating Greek and Roman myths on an ancient laptop as cosmic chaos presses in on him.
Sportcast 2 (Sara Sjölin, Sweden/Denmark, World Premiere)
A comedy-drama film where artist Sara Sjölin is using a football game as a backdrop to tell the story of her former relationship with an ‘emotional colonizer’.