CPH:DOX 2024 (March 13-24) unveiled February 21 its full programme for 2024. Among the 200 new films on offer are 84 world, 32 international and 9 European premieres. New thematic sections will focus on “the most urgent topics of our time, from geopolitics to body politics,” the festival writes, and stars coming to Copenhagen include musicians Peter Doherty and Peaches as well as Academy Award-winning filmmakers Alex Gibney and James Marsh.
This year’s programme features six competition categories, judged by an international jury. These are DOX:AWARD, F:ACT AWARD, NORDIC:DOX AWARD, NEXT:WAVE AWARD, NEW:VISION AWARD, and the new HUMAN:RIGHTS AWARD.
From March 22-31, a selection of films from the programme will be screened online on the festival’s streaming platform PARA:DOX. What’s more, the film programme can be experienced March 13-24 in cinemas in Copenhagen and in 42 municipalities around Denmark.
“The 21st edition of CPH:DOX comes at a time when there is an urgent need to highlight art’s ability to facilitate dialogue and encourage (self) reflection,” the festival notes.
“For CPH:DOX, our primary focus is on tackling the most crucial and pressing contemporary issues. In a world increasingly marked by polarization, we must be willing to challenge our own established truths and engage in meaningful dialogues with those holding different opinions and perspectives. Director Max Kestner exemplifies this open and inquisitive spirit in the festival’s opening film Life and Other Problems, where he embarks on a quest to unravel the meaning and value of life, inspired by the global media scandal surrounding the euthanasia of a giraffe in a Danish Zoo exactly a decade ago. This same ethos of openness and curiosity guides us at CPH:DOX as we navigate the complexities of the world – even during tumultuous times, as we are experiencing at the moment,” says Artistic Director Niklas Engstrøm.
Click here the full 2024 CPH:DOX programme.
Israeli-Palestine conflict
A total of seven films this year explore the Israel-Palestine conflict in various ways, including three world premieres. Tal Barda’s I Shall Not Hate, world premiering in the festival’s new Human Rights Competition, features the Nobel Prize nominated Palestinian author and doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish who keeps fighting for peace despite the personal loss of his three daughters in an Israeli attack on Gaza. Other films about Israel and Palestine include Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind’s Familiar Phantoms, (world premiere) and Jonathan Schaller & Philipp Schaeffer’s Silent Night (world premiere).
‘Conflicted’: Geopolitics and Territorial Disputes
Another theme of the festival is “the resurgence of geopolitics.” Under the heading ‘Conflicted’, CPH:DOX will focus on a number of conflicts around the world that deal with culture, identity, and territorial disagreements, focussing on (as well as Israel/Palestine) the war in Ukraine, the ongoing conflict between China and Taiwan and the longstanding dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
“The intention of ‘Conflicted’ is not to equate the conflicts – each of them is different and has its own unique characteristics,” the festival adds. “But across the board, they all deal with identity, culture, and territorial disputes, and none of them have easy solutions. However, one of the conflicts has made significant progress towards a peaceful resolution, namely the conflict in Northern Ireland, which is addressed in ‘The Flats’, premiering at CPH:DOX in the main competition.”
In addition, the festival is introducing a new Human Rights Award in partnership with the Danish Institute for Human Rights. There are 10 films nominated for the award, which features 5 world premieres, a single European premiere, and 4 international premieres.
2024 focus: ‘Body politics’
‘Body Politics’ is this year’s overarching festival theme which “delves into the body and our understanding of it which plays a crucial role in our times. What do we envision when we think of the body? What characterizes ‘the normal body’, and what happens when we dismantle and deconstruct that notion? These are questions that the programme of CPH:DOX 2024 attempts to address in a specially curated film programme focusing on the body, featuring thematic debates, events and parties, each envisioned and brought to light through the prisms of ART, SCIENCE and SOCIETY,” writes the festival.
Further exploring ‘Body Politics’, this year’s signature Social Cinema at Kunsthal Charlottenborg festival center, designed by the Aspekt Office studio and supported by the Bevica Foundation, will open with a special focus on bodily accessibility and inclusivity.
“Body politics is also the focal point of this year’s visual identity. By subjecting three festival-relevant directors to UV Mapping, where 3D objects are unfolded into flat 2D representations, art director Viktor Aabo literally rearranges notions about the boundaries between our physical and digital selves,” the festival writes.
Key names in the line-up
Libertines lead man Pete Doherty visits the festival for a special screening of Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin. The event will take place March 18 at Bremen Theater when Doherty and director Katia de Vidas – also Doherty’s wife – openly discuss the substance abuse that has shadowed his entire career. After the screening, Doherty will give an intimate acoustic concert.
Elsewhere, Canadian electroclash superstar Peaches will be in Copenhagen to talk about the film portrait of her, Teaches of Peaches.
Numerous award-winning directors will be in Copenhagen, such as the Academy Award-winning Alex Gibney (at CPH:DOX with In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon) and James Marsh (with the Samuel Beckett biopic Dance First) as well as Shiori Ito (Black Box Diaries) and Cannes winner Asmae El Moudir (The Mother of All Lies).
Out-of-competition world premieres include, among others, Peter Middleton’s Apollo Thirteen: Survival, Ciaran Cassidy’s Housewife of the Year and the The Stimming Pool made by The Neurocultures Collective,in collaboration with Steven Eastwood.
Special festival exhibitions
In ‘Reincarnations of Shadows’, Thao Nguyen Phan’s first solo exhibition on Scandinavian soil, the maker “delves into pressing questions about her homeland’s history in relation to more contemporary issues of environment, colonialism, and historiography,” the festival writes.
Additionally, CPH:DOX will give space to its signature INTER:ACTIVE exhibition, curated by head of studies Mark Atkin. “INTER:ACTIVE is not just an immersive exhibition, but an exploration of the interplay between creativity and technology which expands the realm of nonfiction as a fixed genre. Through various media such as video games, interactive installations, video art, and AI, a range of artists will explore changes in how we relate to our physical selves and ask how we can burst the frames of our imagined limitations.”
CPH:INDUSTRY
CPH:INDUSTRY activities include the international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM; the INTRO:DOX programme for emerging filmmakers; CPH:MARKET, a curated market offering access to 150+ documentary films of the official CPH:DOX selection; INTER:ACTIVE SYMPOSIUM and CPH:LAB showcasing progressive practitioners of new forms of storytelling on the forefront of immersive media, and CPH:CONFERENCE, curated series of industry talks and sessions, presented in partnership with Documentary Campus.
