Geoffrey Macnab

At the age of nine, Ugandan Dominic Ongwen was kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Years later, he is standing trial for war crimes in the Hague. “Many people see him as a victim, as a boy whose life was interrupted by this abduction. Some don’t understand this line that we [have] in the West, that once you become an adult, you suddenly stop being a victim,” co-director Lukasz Konopa tells Business Doc Europe.

This year’s CPH:DOX has 17 immersive projects on display, a record number. Casting his eye over the VR selection, CPH:LAB’s Head of Studies Mark Atkin notes an intriguing trend - the use of gaming tools. “I am really conscious that creativity precedes innovation. It is through the experiments of artists such as these that we learn what these tools are really good at. It is their pioneering efforts that willed what will become the metaverse,” he tells BDE.

You won’t find many documentaries that were conceived in more unlikely fashion than Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized (opening CPH:DOX following its world premiere in Sundance). The director spotted Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist Aaju Peter by chance on the streets near the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. They’d never met before yet Peter was to become the subject of a film which would take seven years to complete.

CPH Dox is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2023. “The belief that we can expand on what documentary is and what it can be, that is the red thread that has gone through the history of the festival,” comments Artistic Director Niklas Engstrøm. “We want to present all the different formats and colours that documentary comes in.” (But he also wants to party, he tells BDE.)

Dutch director Johan Kramer discusses his doc that examines the inseparable bond between pets and their owners. The director acknowledges that it would have been easy to portray his human protagonists as eccentric oddballs. He was determined, though, to treat them with respect. After all, as the owner of a whippet called Paco that he dotes over, he often finds himself talking to the dog as if it’s a human being…

The new film, commissioned by the festival and put together by curator Jo Reid, is a celebration of women and bicycles…and emancipation. “That was my brief, to make an archive film about women and cycling,” Reid explains her remit to Business Doc Europe. “It’s nice and broad which meant I could make it my own.”

Focusing on the years 1959 to 1964, the feature doc Cassius X: Becoming Ali, screening at the Glasgow Film Festival this week, offers insights into the ‘Greatest’ that many viewers will not have heard before. Director Muta'Ali Muhammad and writer/broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove, on whose book the documentary is based, go the distance with Business Doc Europe.

Prolific documentary director Mark Cousins talks to Business Doc Europe about his latest work, about another highly productive filmmaker, the late and very great Alfred Hitchcock. From the outset Cousins realised that his approach to a subject whom we all are familiar with would have to be unique and distinctive. “I wanted to take the road less travelled,” Cousins says of the route he embarked on through the Hitchcock oeuvre.

For the 20th anniversary of CPH:DOX, 17 immersive projects will be showcased at the INTER:ACTIVE Exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg March 15-26 together with three special performances. Under the theme ‘Breaking the Code’, the selected pieces “collectively question the dominant forces that colonise our imagination in an algorithm-led world and offer immersive perspectives on creativity, representation and social structures in our society.”

These have been tough years in Lebanon. Political corruption, inflation, economic problems and the 2020 explosion in the port in Beirut have made the lives of Lebanese citizens increasingly difficult. But as Lea Najjar shows in her new doc, some folk turn to very alternative pursuits to find respite, such as pigeon competitions. The director takes flight with Business Doc Europe.