CPH:DOX Trade Chief Tereza Simikova on ‘Difficult the Concept That Documentary Is One Factor’

As soon as thought-about a showcase dedicated to hybrid documentaries, the CPH:FORUM in Copenhagen has steadily reworked right into a four-day occasion that presents a wide range of matters, genres and inventive approaches from a various group of filmmakers. Whereas the rigorously curated market isn’t fazed by experimental approaches to the shape, the trade occasion additionally champions conventional docu initiatives and offers a outstanding platform for veteran, mid-career and beginner administrators and producers.

This 12 months, the financing and co-production occasion, going down in the course of the twentieth version of the CPH:DOX documentary movie pageant, will characteristic 34 worldwide initiatives chosen from a report quantity 478 submissions. In line with inventive director of CPH:DOX Niklas Engstrom, the movies chosen to take part within the FORUM didn’t want to satisfy a selected standards, however every undertaking is “essential artistically, socially, politically, and culturally.”

Tereza Simikova, head of trade and coaching at CPH:DOX, provides: “We don’t have unifying standards that we then apply to all totally different movies to create a lineup that’s actually stone stable. What we actually attempt to do is to problem the concept that documentary is that this one factor. At festivals all over the world, particularly the A-list festivals, they’ve a particular documentary class and two talks about documentary filmmaking, which is in fact hilarious. If fiction has, I don’t know, 17 totally different genres, documentary might simply even have 17 genres on the very least. So, we’re actually trying into totally different views on perhaps comparable themes.”

Excessive-profile worldwide filmmakers set to current their newest undertaking embody Oscar-nominated Jessica Kingdon (“Ascension”) with an Untitled Animal Challenge, and Ljubomir Stefanov (“Honeyland”) with “Home of Earth.” Moreover BAFTA winner Finlay Pretsell (“Time Trial”) will unveil his newest work “Douglas Gordon: Self Divided,” and CPH:DOX’s 2021 high prize winner Ousmane Samassekou (“The Final Shelter”) shall be on the FORUM with “Dreamscape.”

“We really take a look at these (FORUM) initiatives as items of 1 large puzzle,” explains Simikova. “So, we’re curating in such a approach that the movies converse to one another. The lineup is our assertion on the world of filmmaking and the world as such.”

The occasion runs March 21-23, with CPH:WIP (works-in-progress) and CHANGE displays going down on March 20.

CPH:WIP will current eight initiatives. The titles embody initiatives from established filmmakers comparable to Yrsa Roca Fannberg, Camilla Magid, Håvard Bustnes and Zippy Kimundu, who will present scenes from their upcoming movies and search for hole financing or a launch pad for additional distribution.

The event co-production coaching program CHANGE, which was established in 2021 in partnership with IMS (Worldwide Media Help) and EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs) will characteristic eight initiatives from six Japanese European international locations – Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

One motive the CHANGE program launched is as a result of lack of submissions from international locations on the jap border of Europe previous to 2021.

“Understanding how essential this area is to Europe, we had been questioning if it actually takes Sean Penn to make a movie (concerning the Ukraine) or can we even have first-hand testimonies from these international locations and from the filmmakers who stay there?” says Simikova. “Filmmakers who perceive all of the context and may break it down for the remainder of Europe and the worldwide neighborhood to essentially perceive what’s at stake and what the dynamics are there. So, we needed to be sure that these filmmakers have entry to assets, and the European market to allow them to actually make their very own movies and educate the remainder of us.”

Along with educating the world, Engstrom provides that CHANGE movies can even, hopefully, maintain information from Japanese Europe within the headlines.

“How democracies are literally holding up within the jap a part of Europe is essential for the way forward for all of us,” Engstrom says. “It’s actually essential that we maintain the dialog going so one other Iron Curtain doesn’t come down. These documentaries are a technique to maintain the communication going.”

Movie financiers from all over the world and high representatives from streaming platforms comparable to Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon, and broadcasters together with ARTE, BBC, CNN, Nationwide Geographic and POV will descend on Copenhagen to hearken to FORUM pitches and join with filmmakers. Whether or not or not initiatives garner financing and distribution is anybody’s guess given the tightening of streamer’s purse strings and the overwhelming recognition of crime and movie star fare over provocative political-leaning docus.

However regardless of the present distribution local weather, Simikova stays optimistic.

“We now have by no means seen our FORUM or our market as a service group to the present market,” she says. “We attempt to invite the people who find themselves working in these (distribution and financing) areas to affix the dialog with the filmmakers. It’s true that the streamers have a mission to carry the movies which can be becoming (a sure) standards that they obtain. However the people who find themselves working at these streaming corporations are additionally residents and people and people who find themselves deeply fascinated about documentaries. And we attraction to them as such. So, it’s important for us to have them right here. It’s tremendous essential for us to organize a program which is related for them in order that they’ve a motive to interact with the movies that we choose for them. But it surely’s not that we’re pre-selecting, we aren’t their algorithm. And we don’t need to be one. We actually need to create house for movies which can be socially, artistically or politically difficult and we need to make an argument for them.”