The 22nd edition of Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) arrives at a fraught moment for the non-fiction film community, according to CPH:DOX artistic director Niklas Engstrom.
Speaking to Screen on a sunny Copenhagen day, Engstrom says, “Even though it’s beautiful weather, there’s a perfect storm raging outside.
“You have limited or declining public funding; risk-averse streamers; rising production costs; higher inflation; a very crowded marketplace; and sales are tough. People are telling us that these are tough times.”
The difficulties for the sector only strengthen Engstrom’s resolve to host an impactful event. “I don’t think there has been a time when documentaries have been more important than now,” says the director. “With all the fake news flowing around, nuanced films about the real world are more important than ever.”
Practical assistance the festival can provide includes distribution. West Bank-set documentary No Other Land had its international premiere at last year’s festival. After none of the traditional Danish distributors acquired the film, CPH:DOX stepped in to release it in the territory, and ended up with 16,000 admissions – the second-highest for a documentary in Denmark last year.
Engstrom also highlights Para:Dox, the festival’s year-round streaming platform, as a way of “helping documentaries get out to audiences.”
CPH:DOX 2025 runs from March 19-30, and will play a record 68 feature-length world premieres across its selection, which includes its five competitive strands. New for this year is the Human:Rights initiative, a three-year project aiming to improve awareness of human rights in Denmark and beyond.
“The old world order, on which the idea of human rights was based, is breaking down,” says Engstrom. “This is a time to highlight the importance of human rights. It will be tougher to uphold human rights in a world where the great powers are looking even more at their interests than a rules-based international system.”
The human rights focus began with last year’s Human: Rights award, won by Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries – which went on to an Oscar nomination, alongside eventual winner No Other Land.
Katrine Kiilgaard, managing director of Copenhagen Film Festivals, says the festival is “not agitating for any specific order”, but rather “trying to enhance the public discourse about which ways to choose as a society.”
Films in the Human: Rights competition include Susanna Edwards’s The Dialogue Police, about a special unit in Sweden who aim to mediate protests and activists using only words. The film’s international premiere tomorrow (March 20) will be followed by a debate and an audience participation event that will test freedom of speech in practice.
The festival opens this evening (March 19) with the world premiere of Tommy Gulliksen’s Facing War, showing NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg’s final year in post amid the Russia-Ukraine war and rising fears of conflict across Europe.
Such is the festival’s embrace of the political sphere, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen will take part in a discussion with Stoltenberg about the film and the future of NATO, at the festival’s opening gala. The event will be streamed to cinemas and cultural centres across Denmark.
Frederiksen has recently been dealing with provocative comments by US president Donald Trump, in which he said the US wanted to acquire the arctic island of Greenland – an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Engstrom emphasises that the festival has been spotlighting Greenland long before it spiked Trump’s erratic attention, including via the opening film in three of the last four years. This year’s selection includes the world premiere of Nordic: Dox title Walls – Akinni Inuk, about the bond between two Greenlandic women, one of whom is in prison.
National effort
Dox: Danmark, the festival’s initiative for screening its titles in municipalities around the country, is expanding again. Having started with nine municipalities in 2021 and expanded to 42 by last year, it has bounced to 54 for 2025 – meaning over half of Denmark’s 98 municipalities will be playing CPH:DOX films.
“Our aim was 60 by 2027,” says Kiilgaard, noting the festival is ahead of schedule.
Engstrom jokes the festival is capitalising on a powerful emotion: envy. “Everybody looks at their neighbouring municipality and thinks ‘We also want our version of Dox’.”
Despite the challenges, Kiilgaard believes the festival is well-placed to weather the storm, with multi-year funding partnerships with private foundations in addition to its state support.
“Every year is an exercise in reinventing new funds,” says Kiilgaard. “I would say we are in a better place than we’ve been for a while.”
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