Copenhagen's first international documentary film festival cph:dox, which wrapped this weekend, saw its major awards go to Jos de Putter's Dutch film Dans, Grozny, Dans and Jose Padilha's Brazilian Bus 174.

"Dans, Grozny, Dans is a deeply humanistic tale of a dance group and their dedicated teacher in a tale of culture as a form of resistance. Jos de Putter's universal and gripping film goes against the stereotypes of hate and propaganda in a war infested setting," said the main competition jury led by Jannike Aahlund, head of programming at the Goteborg Film Festival, who also gave a special mention to Mika Ronkainen's Finnish doc Screaming Men.

The Euros 5,000 prize was sponsored by national broadcaster DR, while the festival's parallel competition, the Amnesty Award, of another Euro5.000, came from worker's union HK.

Jose Padilha's Bus 174 was singled out by a jury led by Iranian director Maziar Bahari "for its grim, penetrating and intensely gripping portrait of the outcasts of Brazilian society, the street kids of the Rio de Janeiro slums". The Amnesty jury also gave a special mention to Carlos Bosch and Joseph Maria Domenech's Spanish Balseros - Cuban Rafters.

81 films screened at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, which managed to attract twice the expected number of admissions, 11,706, despite its meagre budget. This means that the date for next year's event already has been set for Nov 5.

The two most popular films were the two highly anticipated new local films, Kasper Torsting's Rocket Brothers and Lars von Trier and Joergen Leth's The Five Obstructions, which closed and opened the festival respectively.

At the opening ceremony, which even the otherwise crowd shy Lars von Trier attended, documentary filmmaker Anne Regitze Wivel received the Roos Award 2003 for her contribution to documentary filmmaking in Denmark. Her films include Soren Kierkegaard (1994) and Giselle (1991). She is currently working on Faces, a film about Greenland.

Topics