Geoffrey Macnab

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.”

“Does Europe have to get dirty before getting green?” That’s the key question asked in Scars Of Growth, the new feature doc from Linda Osusky and Monika Grassl. One of the subjects the film explores is the green mining of the raw material needed for new technologies. “Mentally, I think that it is an old generation that is guiding and directing the policies…we want to show that it is the wrong way. You cannot mine yourself out of the climate crisis…you cannot destroy nature to save nature,” says co-director Linda Osusky tells BDE.

Welcome to the very unusual rural retreat where queer youngsters can spend time attending workshops, having fun and addressing any anxieties they may feel about school, family or identity. “When I saw the field full of parents dropping off their kids, I immediately had to cry,” Dutch co-director van der Rhee describes his feelings when he first encountered the camp. “A field full of queer young people who are accepted by their parents - that affected me so super deeply.”

When she began work on The Tender Revolution (screening in Competition - Focus at FIFDH Geneva), German director Annelie Boros was “looking for people who put care at the centre of all they are doing - caregivers or also care-takers.” She adds to BDE: “I feel there is this connection between taking care of humans but also everything which is alive - and this is something not really talked about in the care debate most of the time.”