CPH:DOX interview: No Place Like Home by Emilie Beck
In Emilie Beck’s debut feature doc, screening in Nordic:Dox, a young woman, Priyangika, who was adopted at a young age, embarks on an existential odyssey to her birth country of Sri Lanka to discover her own story. “I knew that whatever she [Priyangika] found during the journey, I wanted to follow her emotions, her existential travel...[but] the further we went, the bigger the story got,” director Beck tells BDE.
CPH:DOX review: Girl Gang by Susanne Regina Meures
Modern day fairy tales don’t include princes and white horses anymore, unless as a prop perhaps in a carefully composed video. Who needs Prince Charming when you can be a successful influencer and live a life filled with online love? Girl Gang, selected for DOX:Award Competition, tells the captivating story of a girl’s dream come true, but whether it’s a happy ending is a matter of opinion.
CPH:DOX review: Just Animals by Saila Kivelä, Vesa Kuosmanen
The ethical and environmental issues around industrial farmed animal production may form the worrying and often disturbing backdrop to Saila Kivelä and Vesa Kuosmanen’s often provocative documentary, but at heart it is a film about relationships and how they can become severely strained when emotions run high, and how political savvy must strike a fine balance with activism.
CPH:DOX interview: The Eclipse by Nataša Urban
It may be framed by images of the total eclipses of 1961 and 1999 which were observable in her former country of Serbia, but Nataša Urban’s DOX:Award documentary is not a study of astronomical phenomena. Far from it. Rather, the film comprises a heartfelt mea culpa for Serbian atrocities inflicted during the Balkan wars. “My homeland […] put me through hell, and much worse, had done unconceivable atrocities, genocide even, in neighbouring countries,” says Urban.
CPH:DOX review: Midwives by Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing
In Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s Dox:Award Competition documentary, against the backdrop of a country torn apart by terrible religious and political conflict, two women from either side of the divide do their best as midwives in one of the remoter regions of Myanmar.
CPH:DOX review: Navalny by Daniel Roher
As Alexei Navalny says at the start of this film, “let’s make a thriller," adding that were he to die then direct Daniel Roher was free to make "a boring movie about memory.” Despite constant pressure from the Russian authorities and a poison attempt back in 2020, Putin’s political nemesis didn’t die, and so Roher’s film does indeed take the form of a gripping thriller…one all the more chilling and prescient given the current situation in Russia and Ukraine.
CPH:DOX interview: Dear Dancer by Marcus Lindeen
Swedish director Marcus Lindeen talks to Business Doc Europe about his short film Dear Dancer (international premiere), made in response to an interpretative dance event in Stockholm which was denied an audience because of lockdown, but which acclaimed choreographer Deborah Hay was determined should go ahead.
CPH:DOX review: Moosa Lane by Anita Mathal Hopland
If you can overcome the at-times unnecessarily dramatic voice-over, Moosa Lane is a beautiful documentary about bridging the gap between two cultures - the one the director was born into and the one she was formed out of.
CPH:DOX interview: Hide And Seek by Victoria Fiore
TV dramas have long perpetuated the stereotype of Naples as a Mecca for gangsters. In her Dox:Award Competition film, director Victoria Fiore wanted to show another side of the city, and so follows the Neopolitan kids, especially the lovable but mischievous Entoni. “Entoni’s story just shone through,” the director tells BDE. “I fell in love with his energy. He had so much of it. We got along straight away.”
CPH:DOX review: Outside by Olha Zhurba
The backdrop might well be the hard streets of Ukraine, but the themes of Outside are universal ones – the story of a young man growing up on the streets, lost within an uncaring system and struggling to break free from a cycle of petty criminality and rebellion…a lost soul for sure, but also one that director Olha Zhurba has come to worry about and care for.
