CPH:DOX 2021

Award-winning Danish director Pernille Rose Grønkjær is promising that her new feature doc Solutions will “spike debate.” The film is based around a rendezvous in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at which leading scientists, philosophers and entrepreneurs came together to discuss no less than the survival of the planet. Grønkjær explains more to BDE.

Stalin had lots. Saddam Hussein employed several and his son Uday had one of his own too. Gaddafi kept his share and pock-marked Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega maintained four of them. Welcome to the world of body doubles and political decoys. A singular Mads Brügger tells more…

Belgian filmmaker Volkan Üce talks to Business Doc Europe about his feature doc that places centre stage the staff of a vast, all-inclusive hotel complex on the Turkish Riviera, in particular the brooding philosopher Hakan and the shy, young Ismael.

Director Johann Grimonprez and producers Daan Milius and Emmy Oost pitched their new project that fuses the promise of African decolonization in the 1960s, the rise of the US civil rights movement and the State Department’s mobilization of ‘jazz ambassadors’ for propaganda purposes.

The Turkish/Norwegian director talks to Business Doc Europe about the force of nature that is Seyran Ateş, lawyer, author, feminist, female imam and social campaigner and now the subject of a feature doc competing in Nordic:Dox Award Competition, Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution & Islam.

Niklas Engstrøm has been appointed Artistic Director of Copenhagen Film Festivals, which includes CPH:DOX, CPH PIX and BUSTER, and will work closely with a new managing director which the festival board is in the process of recruiting. Outgoing Tine Fischer to sit on the board of Copenhagen Film Festivals.

Who’s that knocking at the door? For the subjects featured in A Man and a Camera, Guido Hendrikx’s playful and provocative new documentary, it’s the director himself, arriving on people’s doorsteps uninvited, waiting to see how they will respond. The Dutch docmaker explains more...

At Cannes Docs, French director Jean-Gabriel Périot discussed both his Directors Fortnight selection Returning to Reims (Fragments) and his upcoming project Facing Darkness, both archive-based, during a panel organised by Swiss doc fest Visions du Réel.

Competition line-up comprises 64 titles, featuring 47 world premieres, 9 international premieres and 6 European premieres. 58% of the titles (or 37 films) are directed by one or more women (66% when including films co-directed by female and male directors). Fest runs April 21 – May 2.

At the heart of this absorbing film is the underlying importance of investigative journalism within a world that prefers to suppress whistle-blowers, and favours spin over responsibility.