CPH:DOX '23

Greta Stocklassa’s feature doc, world-premiering at CPH:DOX, profiles Hans Blix, the Swedish politician who was head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the man charged with the responsibility of determining whether or not Saddam Hussein was harbouring WMDs post-9/11. The director discusses Blix with BDE.

A disturbing and brutal delve into the dark and violent underbelly of military conscription in Belarus as seen from the perspective of the country’s much put-upon youth, Motherland offers a striking – and deeply prescient – analysis of a system of bullying and abuse borrowed from neighbouring Russia, and how it is reflected in the country itself.

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not plants have feelings, then take a look at Light Needs, world-premiering at CPH:DOX and offering sublime insight into the secret life of plants, those who care for them and the special relationship they share. It is a film packed with love, humour and a sensuous attention to detail.

In Labor, after Hanna leaves her family and girlfriend for the city of her dreams, San Francisco, a door into a new world is opened up for her, and together with dominatrix Chloe and trans Cyd she begins a journey which takes her further and further away from her life at home in Sweden. “It’s about a lot of other things,” director Tove Pils tells BDE of her film, “like longing for being part of a community and exploring your sexuality.”

Last week CPH:DOX hosted a chat with Academy Award-winning US documentary filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin who discussed their latest endeavour, Wild Life, produced by National Geographic Films. The conversation was moderated by Thom Powers, programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival, co-founder of DOC NYC and host of the Pure Non Fiction podcast.

The Greenland-Denmark doc Twice Colonized by Lin Alluna will open this year's CPH:DOX on March 15. The film will also compete in NEXT:WAVE competition. “Twice Colonized deals with the personal consequences of colonialism and gives us a much-needed new perspective on the colonial history of Denmark, as well as in the rest of the world,” comments CPH:DOX Artistic Director Niklas Engstrøm. The festival runs March 15-26.

Performance art and moving image interweave - and often collide - in Norwegian artist Sille Storihle’s intriguing and provocative doc which uses role-play to examine where performance begins and ends. Debate around performance art always tends to provoke an intense response, and this film pushes all the buttons as it seeks to examine the limits of artistic boundaries, if indeed they exist at all.

Life-affirming and gently moving, director/editor/cinematographer Jella Bethmann’s highly watchable Mrs Hansen & The Bad Companions manages to restore our faith in humanity within a world that seems determined to sideline society’s waifs and strays.

An amazing portrait of a homophobic Polish Catholic activist who changes his heart and his mind to become an active member of the LGBTQIA+ community. Director Hanka Nobis took a big gamble by following young Antek, a member of the Polish Catholic Brotherhood, for a long time, suspecting he was different from the others, but what happened next is the stuff clickbait is made of.

The title refers to a top-secret UK government surveillance programme that allows the authorities to download mobile phone data from suspects stopped at UK ports. When human rights activist Muhammad Rabbani refused to hand over the passwords to his devices he was threatened with imprisonment. “Even though I started with Rabbani’s story…I wanted to make a film looking at this broader landscape around questions of digital privacy,” the director tells BDE.