CPH:DOX 2025

Ai Weiwei’s Animality offers a global overview of human-animal relationships in the age of industrialisation, from circus animals in China to the culling of mink in Denmark. Documenting without judging, Ai’s often beautiful, often hard to watch panorama quietly forces us to rethink our own opinions. That Ai Weiwei manages to raise so many questions without ever asking them is a testament to the effectiveness of his wide-ranging approach.

A languid and rather plaintive documentary about grizzled miners clinging to their dreams of finding gold in the remote outdoors, Juho-Pekka Tanskanen’s The Last Misfits by the Golden River is a warm and elegant homage to a unique way of life as it follows the last group of prospectors searching for riches deep in the Finnish wilderness.

“From the beginning I wanted to address one of the problems that concerns me most at the moment, something that affects us all,” comments Natxo Leuza, director of the feature doc Black Water, about the flooding of much of Bangladesh as a result of climate change. “However, it was always clear to me that the story should focus on the characters. I wanted them to carry the weight of the film, representing the millions of people who will have to leave their homes.”

During the CPH:DOX Rough Cut session, directors Jacob Tschernia and Tomer Slutzky took to the stage to present The Alarmist, a gripping political documentary six years in the making. The Danish-US co-production traces the extraordinary political journey of Stav Shaffir, the youngest woman ever elected to the Israeli Parliament, against the backdrop of Israel’s democratic unravelling and the dramatic collapse of its political left. Screen Scotland’s Head of Unscripted Dani Carlaw moderated the presentation.

“Of course, I do bring my own vision into the film, my own pessimistic vision, my own personal feelings that I am tired of war,” Oscar-winning Mstyslav Chernov tells BDE of his new documentary 2000 Metres to Andriivka, receiving its European premiere. But this is balanced by “the absolute dedication, strength and hope that the Ukrainian soldiers have on this battlefield. If they don’t have those feelings, if they don’t carry those flags, if they don’t have the hope, if they don’t have that resilience, then Ukraine is gone as a country.”

An engagingly oddball and gently philosophical examination into the relationship between humans and animals, Sally Jacobson and Tuva Bjork’s breezy, thoughtful and amusing Unanimal muses on how we have looked at animals over the years. Ironic, amusing and gently insightful, Unanimal offers an alternate way to look at how we share the planet with them.

Hannah Papacek Harper’s feature doc is inspired by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris' book The Lost Words, itself created in response to 50 words all relating to nature being summarily removed from the Oxford Youth Dictionary in 2007 - words such as ‘raven’, ‘magpie’ and ‘otter.’ Without these words at their disposal, it becomes harder for the young generation to develop empathy and connection with the non-human world, Harper reasons to BDE.

Set against a backdrop of a city (Mosul, Iraq) devastated both by war and ISIS occupation, The Lions by the River Tigris tells a story both of stubbornness and regeneration as Fakhri, a passionate collector of artefacts, sets his heart on a marble doorframe owned by fisherman Bashar. But Bashar won't sell – even if the house that surrounds it is in ruins. “I've been very lucky in this film…because each time I was in Mosul there was something else that shaped the whole story, opened the doors and give me a new layer,” director Zaradasht Ahmed tells BDE.

The Finnish industry delegation features five producers, “each with a unique vision and a slate of projects ready to captivate global audiences.” Additionally, the Finnish Film Fund has just invested 656,000 euros in production support; and at the Jussi Film Awards (March 21), the feature doc Once Upon a Time in a Forest won The Nordisk Film Award, worth 20,000 euros, as well as Documentary of the Year and Cinematography of the Year Awards.

How do adults make a documentary about the private world of children without intruding into and destroying that world? This was the very delicate challenge facing filmmakers Danny Biancardi, Stefano La Rosa and Virginia Nardelli when they embarked on their project, The Castle, screening in competition at CPH:DOX (and sold by Fandango). The trio explains all to Business Doc Europe.