How CPH:DOX Got here to Be Pivotal Occasion in Documentary Calendar

When CPH:DOX shifted from a fall pageant to a spring-based fest in 2017, it acquired out of IDFA’s shadow and grew into some of the influential documentary occasions of the 12 months.

“It made an enormous leap in prominence when it moved to March as a result of it match into the calendar in a extra thrilling approach for lots of documentary stakeholders,” Thom Powers, lead documentary programmer for Toronto Movie Competition, says. “It grew to become an ideal place for movies popping out of Sundance to have a European launch. It’s additionally turn into a really vital place for movies to make world premieres close to the start of the 12 months, which might then ship them on a circuit, touring to different festivals like Scorching Docs or DOC NYC.”

Now in its twentieth 12 months, CPH:DOX is among the many largest documentary movie festivals on the earth. This 12 months’s lineup consists of 200 docus, greater than half of that are making world premieres. There are 61 competitors titles in 5 worldwide competitions, and for the primary time within the fest’s historical past, all 13 movies competing for the highest Dox:Award are world premieres.

For 13 years, CPH:DOX passed off in November within the weeks earlier than IDFA, however in 2015 as worldwide business attendance expanded their presence on the all-doc fest, the choice was made to create extra space to, as former Copenhagen Movie Competition CEO Steffen Andersen-Møller, put it, “unfold CPH:DOX’s potential.”

“Ideally, (the date change) will be certain that CPH:DOX opens the 12 months, and IDFA closes it,” Andersen-Møller mentioned in 2015.

In accordance with producer Julie Goldman, that’s exactly what occurred.

“IDFA and CPH:DOX are splendidly complementary,” she says. “They’re each these very substantial and influential doc-driven festivals in the beginning and finish of the 12 months.”

Goldman, a two-time Oscar nominee who based Motto Footage, has three movies at CPH:DOX this 12 months: Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano’s “Like to Love You, Donna Summer time,” Maite Alberdi’s “The Everlasting Reminiscence,” and Nancy Schwartzman’s “Sufferer/Suspect.”

“Everlasting Reminiscence” and “Sufferer/Suspect” premiered at Sundance in January.

“It’s an exquisite subsequent cease for each movies,” Goldman says. “It’s a primary search for worldwide audiences.”

Powers, who will likely be at CPH:DOX to host the fest’s Morning with Filmmakers sequence, provides: “Because the starting of CPH, they’ve made an actual effort to carry worldwide decision-makers from the worlds of distribution and pageant programming. So it’s a spot greater than another European documentary festivals, the place filmmakers have an opportunity to actually propel their profession in numerous methods.”

Regardless of the fest’s development, it stays a novel, community-based affair recognized for its enthusiastic audiences and upbeat vibes. It’s additionally a pageant that doesn’t concern the nonfiction style’s continuous evolution of kind.

“CPH is a really curious pageant,” says creative director of CPH:DOX Niklas Engstrom. “For some time, we have been boxed in as this loopy pageant in Copenhagen focusing totally on hybrid movies. In fact, that’s a part of the pageant’s historical past, and people kinds of movies are nonetheless tremendous fascinating to us as a result of they attempt to develop on the notion of what documentary is.” However Engstrom explains that along with the experimental, CPH:DOX programmers are additionally drawn to all kinds of docus, together with simple investigative journalistic tasks.

The general mission of CPH, Engstrom says, is to “develop on what documentary is and might be.”

The CPH:FORUM, which can characteristic 34 worldwide tasks, is a primary instance of that mission. Movie financiers from around the globe and high representatives from streaming platforms resembling Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon all descend on Copenhagen to attend the annual four-day occasion.

Fifth Season’s Blake Levin and Ariel Richter will likely be at there in search of docus to finance, fairness finance, and/or associate on. Richter credit Tereza Simikova, head of business and coaching at CPH:DOX, for making the FORUM stand out.

“One of many nice issues that Tereza does is that she acknowledges what firm mandates are and recommends which tasks you need to meet,” says Richter. “It’s very exhausting to attempt to join gross sales brokers and patrons with a curated record of tasks. It takes time, and plenty of thoughtfulness, and she or he does it. Final 12 months, every part she advised us to give attention to, we have been interested by.”

Levin provides: “We’re an unbiased movie and tv studio. International storytelling and nice storytelling are our mandates. That’s our curiosity in having the ability to go to CPH:DOX. Somebody who can bridge the hole for us like Tereza and the pageant is tremendous priceless.”

Opal H. Bennett, co-producer for “POV” had heard loads of chatter about CPH:FORUM through the years however by no means attended. This 12 months she made the fest a precedence.

“The suggestions was you’ll want to be there,” Bennett says. “Particular issues are taking place there. There are particular conversations happening. It’s very well curated. So I booked my flight.”