CPH:DOX 26

Inspired by the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin and other feminist thinkers, Irene Margrethe Kaltenborn’s The Mother Age is a sumptuously filmed ode to the beauty and power of nature, in which the director all the time seeks alternative ways to relate to, and learn, from the natural world. The film acknowledges our human limitations when it comes to understanding that world, and how we must be willing to learn in order to find what we are looking for.

The title might hint at a deeply racy documentary, but in fact Markku Heikkinen’s rather delicate and compassionate, yet remarkably frank, film tells an open, touching love story about how a couple aims to learn the rules of a new kind of relationship. The film receives its international premiere in NORDIC:DOX Competition.

Revered Faroese actress Birita Mohr hasn’t performed for 12 years and some fans in the Faroe Islands may even have forgotten her, but her son, theatre director, actor and jazz musician Búi Dam, certainly isn’t one of them. To him, she is a legend. In his feature documentary Birita (a world premiere in CPH:DOX) he puts her back on stage to jog the public’s memory. “One of the goals with the film, and also the play, was to take care of her legacy both for the public and for the family - for my children to know who their grandmother was,” Dam tells BDE.

Premiering in the main competition at CPH:DOX 2026, Little Sinner is a profoundly intimate documentary built from more than two decades of personal recordings. Helmed by Daro Hansen and Thomas Papapetros, the film traces Hansen’s journey from Damascus to Denmark while confronting the emotional aftermath of forced marriage, displacement and generational trauma. “The stories within it are incredibly important,” Hansen tells BDE. “So we wanted to balance things carefully. The film is only 90 minutes—how many stories can you tell in that time?”

Business Doc Europe talks to Mandy Chang, who this month was appointed first CEO of the UK advocacy body, Documentary Film Council. “I think if you are privileged enough to work in this industry, you have to give something back - and I feel we are at a critical time in documentary where some of that space that documentaries once took up in the broadcasting schedules has been eroded away by formats and by other kinds of filmmaking,” Chang tells BDE.

Fifty years after the first squatters arrived at the abandoned military barracks close to the heart of Copenhagen, the now-legendary, über-libertarian district of Christiania is still thriving. Karl Friis Forchhammer has been around the area his whole life and provides us with the full history of how a small group of people managed, through ups and downs, to build their own community. What the eponymously-titled doc implicitly underlines is that the world is a better place for having Christiania in it.

Shot compassionately and astutely over a 10-year period, One In a Million charts the course of a young life as an 11-year girl escapes Syria to make the long journey to Germany with her family, frightened but also excited about her new future. Thoughtful and engaging, and made with a real sense of heart, it is a story of family and exile, and of hope and change.

Wandering through the forest, foraging for fungi, indigenous mycologists Juli and Lis are literally following in their ancestors’ footsteps while also contributing to scientific knowledge and sustaining their communities. Beautifully filmed, the documentary portrays the mycelium as a living, breathing and talking entity connected to all of the forest – and to all of us.

Martin, the younger brother of Danish director Emil Langballe, has learning difficulties, as has Martin’s best friend Casper. But that doesn't stop them talking about cars, working on cars, and buying cars. And Martin’s long-held dream is to buy a Honda Civic. “I've always been attracted to these kind of stories of beautiful friendships, and I always liked buddy movies myself, and I thought Martin and Casper were this iconic kind of couple who called out to be filmed,” Langballe tells BDE.

In her feature doc In Defense of Self, Norwegian filmmaker Linn Helene Løken explores the fatal shooting of a man in urgent need of psychiatric help. The film reconstructs the final years of writer Morten Michelsen through more than 35 hours of personal audio recordings, alongside police reconstructions of the incident. World-premiering at CPH:DOX 2026, the 87-minute film examines the fragile intersection between mental healthcare systems and law enforcement, while raising broader questions about responsibility, narrative control and institutional transparency. Director Løken talks to BDE.