Geoffrey Macnab

Norwegian docmaker Benjamin Ree talks to BDE about his double-Sundance winning Ibelin, which screens at CPH ahead of its launch on Netflix. The film, about a young man and his secret gaming life that is only discovered after his untimely death, has been wowing both young and older audiences alike back in Norway. “A lot of them [the older generation] go to the cinema because they want to understand their children or their grandchildren,” says Ree.

The prolific and versatile Alina Simone has been working as a journalist and radio reporter for many years. She is also an essayist, author and singer-songwriter - and now she has turned feature filmmaker too. Her documentary Black Snow, about a Siberian mother-of-three who finds herself under the aggressive scrutiny of the Russian authorities when she steps up as a citizen journalist, world-premiered this week at CPH:DOX. Simone talks to BDE.

50 years on from that momentous night in April 1974 in Brighton, England, when the unsung Swedes won the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo, British filmmaker James Rogan is telling the story of one of the greatest pop bands in history with a depth and insight that transcends cheap nostalgia. “I love to make films about outsiders and I think that ABBA were the ultimate pop outsiders,” he tells BDE of his new feature doc, ABBA - Against the Odds.

“This is the place to be,” First Hand Films CEO and founder Esther van Messel enthuses about CPH:DOX. “There is something about having another IDFA in the spring…all in all, I really feel this place is taking care of film as an art but also as a marketplace.” Nonetheless, the First Hand Films boss sees continuing stresses in the doc sector even as memories of the pandemic recede into the distance.

Gröndahl’s feature documentary follows Finnish birth experts – midwife Kirsi and doula Anna-Riitta - who want to put an end to “obstetric violence” and enable people to give birth on their own terms. “I believe that if this was something people with testicles would experience, not with wombs, there would be more resources put into this, but it’s [seen as] a woman’s issue and so is [considered] not so important,” the director muses on the gender politics behind birth.

Sometimes docmakers struggle very hard to find their subjects. In the case of Lie To Me (international premiere March 18), the subject (Bjørn Bjercke, Bitcoin expert and whistleblower) came direct to the filmmakers, at which point they were immediately pulled into the “rabbit hole” of OneCoin, the fraudulent cryptocurrency presided over by the glamorous Bulgarian-born German swindler Ruja Ignatova, soon to be become one of the FBI’s “most wanted” felons…

In Connie Field’s feature documentary, which world-premieres at CPH:DOX, three Hungarian women fight to expose the dismantling of democracy in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. The director believes that her story can have strong resonance for US audiences. “Who I made it for was people like me, to scare them to death, so that in my country specifically, we will work like mad to make sure that Trump doesn’t get into the White House,” she tells BDE.

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.