Geoffrey Macnab

As Norwegian filmmaker Ellen Ugelstad shows in her new feature documentary, cruelty and coercion within mental health care still continues today. But in tackling it, she takes an unusual stylistic approach. Rather than use verité filmmaking, the director tells her story as if she is making a report for a CNN-like TV news channel. “I thought how can I convey it not in a more entertaining, but a different way, and get a different perspective on it,” the director tells BDE.

Rand Beiruty’s Tell Them About Us is a refugee movie with a difference. Its young female protagonists have fled their homelands to come to Germany. They and their families are living in difficult circumstances but the tone of the film is very upbeat. “I wanted it to be more participatory and more empowering for the girls,” Jordanian director Beiruty tells BDE of her intentions. “It’s also a film about family, about friendship and about the love they have for each other.”

As doors opened on CPH:DOX 2024, Salma Abdalla, CEO of Vienna-based sales outfit Autlook, was striking an upbeat note. After all, the company is arriving in Copenhagen after a strong start to the year. At Sundance in January, Autlook closed an eye-catching global deal with Netflix for Ibelin, its film about a gamer’s secret life, directed by Benjamin Ree. Business was also brisk at the Berlinale last month, she tells BDE.

The statistics are stark. More than 400,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the past 20 years. In his new feature documentary Marching In The Dark (sold by Lightdox and world-premiering at CPH:DOX), Kinshuk Surjan explores the circumstances leading to this tragic loss of life. He also talked to Business Doc Europe on the eve of the Danish docfest.

When Danish filmmakers and photo-journalists Kristoffer Juel Poulsen and Christian Als went to Mongolia to research Neo-Nazi gangs, they encountered the enigmatic Gerel Byamba who resented the creeping Chinese presence in her homeland. She also wanted to stop local women working as prostitutes and was prepared to use violence to achieve her ends. Poulsen tells BDE of her “fierce personality” but also of the fact the camera seemed drawn to her. She had a natural charisma, he says

When Marius the Danish giraffe was “euthanised” in 2014, there was global consternation. But in Max Kestner’s Life and Other Problems, which opens CPH:DOX 2024, the giraffe is just the starting point as Kestner spins off in multiple other directions, discussing everything from biology to physics to the emotional lives of plants and why some humans like impersonating wolves. The Danish director explains more to BDE.

On the eve of CPH:DOX, Artistic Director Niklas Engstrom is philosophical on the role that doc fests can play in a world that seems increasingly broken. “Today, more than ever, the role of film festivals is so important in terms of providing a space for difficult conversations - conversations between people who do not necessarily agree. [It’s about] what art can do, what films can and especially what documentary filmmaking can do because it is so focused on real life.”

Mariana Marín Romero is in Geneva to give a March 11 case study on the impact campaign for the Mexican animated doc Home Is Somewhere Else, which looks at the struggles of young migrants and counts up the human cost when families are torn apart. “I think animation helped us with audiences for them to really listen to the stories,” she explained to BDE before FIFDH doors opened. “When we did the community screenings, we noticed that they worked.”

Since its premiere in Venice last autumn, Andrés Peyrot’s feature documentary God Is A Woman has been feted by critics and audiences alike, and has sparked strong debate about some of the issues it raises. Peyrot was at FIFDH (Geneva) where he showed the film and took part in a panel (March 10 ) on ‘the rights of indigenous peoples: decolonising perspectives and imaginations.” The Swiss-Panamanian director also took time to speak to BDE.

When some Japanese people decide, for whatever reason, to “reset” their lives, they turn to the “night-movers” who help them disappear (as Hartmann and Mori’s feature doc suggests) into thin air. Hartmann describes it as “an emotional human drama film.” It’s not intended as a dry investigative documentary. The director talks of trying to “understand what it means when you run away - but also what it means when you are left behind.”