Interviews

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.

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.

Sabine Lidl’s film about the Norwegian/American author was never going to be a simple retelling of Hustvedt's life story. It would also be about her obsessions and inspirations - figures like Dadaist artist Baroness Elsa and French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. It was also going to be about biology, neurology and psychiatry, her migraines and hyper-sensitivity, and her attritional relationship with her father. “My editor Maxine Goedicke saved me…I had much more to tell, and this was already 110 minutes,” the director tells BDE of the struggle to shoehorn so much material into a feature under two hours. The film screens in the festival's Highlights section.

When the Swedish woman of his dreams fails to return to him after their whirlwind romance, the ‘untouchable’ PK Mahanandia sets out on a treacherous 6000-mile cycle ride across deserts and mountains, and over dangerous borders, to find her. No map, and with only $80 in his pocket. “The story of PK’s cycle journey is an epic adventure filled with magic, but it also really moved me,” says Oscar-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel of his new film, receiving its European premiere in Copenhagen. “His story covers such a rich tapestry of universal themes, from love and destiny to the idea of enduring hope.”

Betsy Hershey and Emma Wall’s film follows the charismatic (if slightly neurotic) US climate activist and stand-up comedian, Michael Greenberg, founder of Climate Defiance, a group which stages imaginative and very noisy protests at public events involving companies and individuals with links to fossil fuels. ‘Our goal is to help people, young people especially, feeling climate anxiety,” Wall tells Business Doc Europe. “For us, it was always about helping them feel a sense of agency and possibility so they can take a role, whatever it is.”

After he read an article about psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and its potential benefits, Swiss director Marcel Wyss decided to become his own guinea pig. “It said that psychedelics can help people deal with deep fears, including the fear of death,” Wyss confides to Business Doc Europe. “After more than twenty years of making documentaries, many people had trusted me with their personal stories. At some point I felt it was my turn to open up and share my own.”

In a society in which expectant young mothers now need to bring their own medicine and equipment to hospital, Caroline, the subject of Nolwenn Hervé’s feature debut The Cord, is part of a network that gives Venezuelan women a chance of a safe pregnancy. “I didn’t have a producer; I didn’t have resources to do it; I didn’t have money but I was sure I would make it,” director Hervé describes both the film’s humble beginnings and her determination to tell Caroline’s story.

As ever, CPH:DOX Industry Head Mara Gourd-Mercado will be overseeing a packed professional programme that includes FORUM, the INTER:ACTIVE Exhibition and CPH:CONFERENCE, and which welcomes the cream of international creative and business talent. What the festival has no say over, however, is the current turmoil across the globe, which means that arranging travel plans for international guests has been somewhat testing. “It is such a fast-moving situation. We don’t know what it is going to look like from one day to another,” Gourd-Mercado tells BDE.