Geoffrey Macnab

In his new feature doc Everest Dark, a world premiere in Copenhagen, Canadian director Jereme Watt tells the story of Mingma Tsiri Sherpa’s attempts to retrieve bodies left on Everest (“Chomolungma”) as an act of tribute to a God angered by death and desecration on the mountain. A man without ego, the Sherpa has himself climbed the mountain nineteen times. “I thought, wow, this guy is an incredible mountaineer. He has helped countless people reach the summit and he is not even an afterthought to their success,” Watt tells BDE.

“I was amazed by her. I liked the way she spoke…since the very beginning, she has been defying the Taliban,” Austrian filmmaker Natalie Halla says of Manizha Bakhtar, Afghan ambassador to Austria and the fiery protagonist of Halla’s new feature doc The Last Ambassador, screening in F:ACT AWARD at CPH and sold by The Party Film Sales.

The Berlin-based company is managing sales on Ai Weiwei’s Turandot and The Helsinki Effect, along with several other high-profile titles. Additionally, it is presenting the inaugural Rise and Shine Award at CPH:Forum, a €3,000 prize awarded to the best pitch project with international potential. “We live and breathe documentary,” says Rise and Shine World Sales managing director Stefan Kloos, expressing the passion that has driven the company since its founding in 2008.

When the much-loved footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović alienated his most loyal fans in his home town of Malmö by investing in a rival football club, the statue that had been erected in his honour suddenly lost its nose. In their documentary, world-premiering March 20 in Copenhagen (just across the water from Malmö), Nils Toftenow, Mathias Rosberg and Olle Toftenow set out to solve the mystery of the missing hooter. “Zlatan’s nose is almost like a metaphor for searching for the meaning of life,” says Nils.

Christian Sønderby Jepsen’s The Father, The Sons and The Holy Spirit (a world premiere in International Competition at CPH:DOX) is a sequel to the director’s earlier, hugely impactful, documentary, The Testament (aka The Will, 2011), about how an inherited family fortune sparks a bitter family dispute. “I didn’t think the story had been put to an end,” Jepsen explains to BDE just why he is again chronicling the lives of the troubled siblings.

Yes, Gar O’Rourke did himself try the mud treatment when he was preparing his new feature doc Sanatorium (a world premiere in International Competition at CPH:DOX and sold by MetFilm Sales). He has also done the salt pools the electro-massages and everything else between. Many docs have been made in Ukraine since the invasion but this is surely the gentlest, funniest and most surprising. O’Rourke gets the full treatment from BDE.

After the implosion of his once successful career as a TV comedy producer, the affable, well-spoken Rob Moore began to work as a gardener and as a corporate “spy” on the activities of anti-asbestos campaigners, posing as…a documentary filmmaker. When he turned whistle-blower to try and help the activists, they ended up suing him. “For us [as documentary makers], conflict is great. We want conflict - but conflict can be very hurtful to people,” Norwegian director Håvard Bustnes reflects on making his new doc, world-premiering at CPH:DOX.

“The world was quite different when we selected the film just a couple of months ago,” Artistic Director Niklas Engstrøm cites CPH:DOX opening film Facing War, about Jens Stoltenberg’s tumultuous final years at the helm of NATO, on the eve of the festival’s 23rd roll-out. “Developments have been so fast that the film looks different today than when we selected it…in some ways, it almost feels like a document from another time period.” CPH:DOX 2025 runs March 19-30.

Director Tommy Gulliksen discusses his CPH:DOX opener Facing War, about fellow Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, who was in the hot seat at NATO during a decade of global tumult before his departure in October 2024. “What we have [at NATO] was built over generations, but it can be torn down in a very short period. Leadership matters. Who we elect matters. Democracy matters,” Gulliksen tells Business Doc Europe.

The feature doc concerns the agency formed in 1949 by the UN General Assembly to prevent starvation and distress among Palestinian refugees. But UNWRA has been heavily attacked in recent months over its alleged links to Palestinian militant groups. “It is obvious that among all the [30,000] UNWRA employees, some of them are connected or belonging or in touch with Hamas,” director Wadimoff tells BDE. “The problem is not this. The problem is the fact that UNWRA is doing the job that nobody else wants to do.”