CPH:DOX 2015 festival - student guide

From 5 – 15 November Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX fills Copenhagen’s cinemas and venues with films from around the world. To help you choose which of the +200 films to watch during the festival, we got Camilla Henriette Q. Madsen from CPH:DOX to give us a short-list for our student readers.

Here is what she came up with.

Camilla’s Top 3 personal choices

“One of my absolute favourites this year is The Wolfpack. Six brothers trapped in an apartment in East New York, living through remaking cult classics like the Reservoir Dog and Pulp Fiction. It is a must see! You feel uplifted and claustrophobic at the same time,”

“Another one on my list is The Swedish Theory of Love where the acclaimed documentarist Erik Gandini sheds critical and informative light on our welfare system. He points to the paradox of individualism isolating us from each other and asks the question: is the price of happiness a lifetime of loneliness?” she says.

“On the political front I would like to highlight a personal favourite. Town on a Wire revolves around a small town close to Tel Aviv inhabited by Palestinian drug barons and fanatical Israeli settlers. This movie shows on a small scale the problems occurring in the Palestine/Israel conflict. I really recommend people to watch this immersive and important film.”

Recommendations to University Post readers

Human
The French master photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s portrait of the inhabitants of our small planet is a magnificent, cinematic experience like no other.

10 Billion – What’s On Your Plate?
How do we make sure there is enough food for a planet with 10 billion people? Become wiser about your own place in the food chain in an educational food film.

A Good American
The deeply disturbing journalistic docu-thriller about the system that could have prevented 9/11, but was stopped by lies and corruption at the NSA.

Deep Web
The story of the idealistic and ultra-libertarian black market website Silk Road, and about how a generation of hacktivists are at war with the authorities on the digital battlefield: the deep net.

The Death Of J.P. Cuenca
A young author’s autobiographical film about his own death – and the attempt to solve it.

Mallory
Seven years of life lived at the bottom of society in a Czech film about a woman’s struggle with heroin and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

The Diplomat
The art of negotiating and international politics on a gigantic scale. Meet the man who is known to negotiate his way out of the most intractable political knots.

The Dream of Europe
At work with two Norwegian employees of Frontex – the company that guards the borders of the EU at a time when human and political considerations brutally collide.

The Emperor’s New Clothes
Russell Brand fights against financial hypocrisy with satire as his weapon in a film by the director of ’24 Hour Party People’.

Return of the Atom
Nuclear power – yes please? The first western power station since Chernobyl was a black, human comedy according to the Finnish artist Mika Taanila.

The Letters
Dark Mexican film about a political miscarriage of justice, staged as a sensory and psychological trip from a different world.

The Other Side
The dark and deep of the America South surrounds you in this acclaimed critic’s hit from Cannes- and from a lyrical talent amongst modern documentarists.

This Changes Everything
The climate crisis is not just today’s biggest challenge. It is also our greatest opportunity to change the world. Naomi Klein explains how.

Thought Crimes
Can you be convicted for a crime that you have not (yet) committed? An NYPD cop’s cannibal fantasies that caused a media stir.

(Dis)Honesty – The Truth About Lies
Everyone is lying – but does a lie make you a bad or a real person? Watch conventional thinking being turned upside down in an entertaining and deeply honest story about lies.

More than film

Camilla fInally suggests going to REALITY:CHECK.

It’s CPH:DOX’s brand new, three-day meeting on democracy. In a giant tent in the Kongens Have park, the audience is invited to take part in debates about freedom of speech with the directors of the movie Je suis Charlie, discuss climate activism with The Yes Men (who are also represented at the festival with their film The Yes Men Are Revolting), and learn about digital surveillance with the NSA whistle blower William Binney.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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