As CPH:DOX Wraps, Copenhagen Event Charts Future Course: To Be The World’s “Most Important Documentary Festival”
27.03.2023 - 13:57
/ deadline.com
CPH:DOX, the international nonfiction film festival in Copenhagen, isn’t shy about stating its ambitions.
“The long-term goal is to be the most important documentary festival in the world,” says artistic director Niklas Engström.
The 20th edition of the festival, which wrapped on Sunday, saw considerable progress toward that objective, Engström tells Deadline.
“It really feels like this is the year where the festival is taking off as an industry event,” the artistic director observes. “It’s been going in that direction for years. It’s been building and building, but it’s like some kind of next level that we reached this year.”
Evidence of that came with the number of documentary world premieres at the festival – more than 100 of them.
“We have a competition 100 percent consisting of world premieres. And I think that’s the next level, coming from where we were the European launching pad for Sundance titles — and still are,” Engström comments. “But now we also get so many great films submitted that we can create a great competition program with only world premieres.”
Judging by one measure – the coterie of prominent documentary filmmakers who brought new work to CPH:DOX — the 20th festival must be considered a big success. A who’s who in the field assembled in Copenhagen, including many Oscar winners and nominees: Asif Kapadia, Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, Roger Ross Williams, Davis Guggenheim, Talal Derki, Maite Alberdi, Wim Wenders, as well as home-grown Danish talents like Academy Award-nominated producers Sigrid Dyekjær and Kirstine Barfod. Danish director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, whose film Flee scored an unprecedented Oscar hat trick last year with nominations for Best Documentary Feature, Best International