#cph:dox

Alexander Skarsgård - CPH:DOX Time and Water 2026. signpostpictures Ig (x)

"Thank you Alexander Skarsgård for coming out to see Time and Water at CPH:DOX!"

Flophouse America - Monica Strømdahl

First mandatory screening for this year at CPH:DOX academy, 24 March, having its World Premiere in the festival. We've been lucky to have a Q&A after movie with Monica, and the next day with my smaller group.

Big start with the voice over about hard data on housing situation for many families in the US than instantly turns, and gains so much power when we se our main character, young Mikal, recording this voice and being part of this reality. This opens the scenario to bring up a social criticism to the system and society, and the absence of some supporting organisation to raise kids.

80 minutes movie where you get to live with this family and be part of a daily routine and system staying inside the routinary situation they are living. When I finished the movie I was convinced and feeling the power of the film I just watched, impressive, personal and approached such emotional and real. Their life is in the details and they are telling so much, with doing the dishes in the bathtub as a repeated daily work, parents sharing time with Mikal and being one at the time with the feeling that the other one is out there drinking. Love declarations during all the film get us to understand that they are really trying to make this work, while having a horizontal relationship, where they split who is taking responsibilities and treating the 9 y/o kid as he was an adult.

All this is carefully worked with a 'invisible camera' framing the space and the characters with beautiful and powerful decisions. We had close ups and details where we see the fragility and feeble feelings of these humans that are just trying to be happy and carry on. Without extradiegetic music is giving value to every moment happening, pointing out sometimes solitude, some times anger and disappointments; summing up to this, some lonely shots of Mikal in the corridor of shelter they live in.

What we could understand, after the Q&A and talk with the director, is the call from Mikal, so brave, to open his place, his life, to have a footage, so he and his family can see through an outsider eye (just for a little while stranger) of their daily life.

Flophouse America earned DOX: Award Special mention

Sunday: March 30, 2025

As a part of the film event, CPH:DOX, I went to Grand Teatret with Jonathan to watch a documentary about Miyazaki and the story of his life, career and how he came up with his animation company, Studio Ghibli. 🌿🎬

It was quite insightful, and rather than having Miyazaki himself sitting in front of the camera and leveraging his story, a lot of it were done through interviews and statements from his close colleagues, family and other professionals fascinated by his work. In fact — apart from showing clips of Miyazaki from the past — he did not officially take part in this documentary at all, but it was interesting to watch regardless. The movie was about 1:30 hours long.

After the movie, we searched for a place to eat dim sum since Jonathan was craving dumplings, lol. We settled to go eat at Hidden Dimsum. It was tasty… and a bit pricey, but we were happy and full of dumplings afterwards, hehe. 🥟

CPH:DOX (The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival) opened this weekend, and on opening night I went with my friend Simon to the beautiful Kunsthal Charlottenborg to see the new award-winning Russian movie THE SHARDS. (This was only my 2nd visit to the theater since I came here 5 years ago!)

Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the effort. It was a brave political and personal coming-of-age journey of a young woman in Putin's Russia, stretched over the last 2 years full of confusion and oppression. She had to deal with personal tragedies (her mom dying of cancer, her boyfriend escapes to Argentina to avoid conscription), while watching the society around her being engulfed by poverty, ignorance and compliance. But it was told in an amateurish, Cinéma vérité style, with a shaky phone camera, and random, impressionistic visuals. They did reflect disintegration and despair, but as a cinematic experience, left me thirsty. 3/10. [*Female Director*]

Den elitære venstreekstremistiske blog Altinget.dk bliver drevet af venstreekstremisten Jakob Nielsen, som på video har truet Rasmus Paludan med falsk anmeldelse. Dette skete kl. 23.20 på Kunsthal Charlottenborg torsdag den 20. marts 2025. Journalisten Jakob Nielsen (tidl. Partiet Politiken) er en meget mærkelig person. Under en debat om ytringsfrihed efter den internationale premiere på…

TIME AFTER TIME

An eight-year montage road movie on a road to nowhere, shot through the windshield of a car. The shortest film of the year, covering a time span of infinite repition.

A lot can happen in eight years. Nothing, too. But apparently something can also happen and nothing can happen at the same time. ‘Time After Time’ is the shortest film of the year. It’s also an eight-year road movie that barely moves. Told via stills taken through the wind screen of a car from roughly the same spot on the road, Peter Lind’s hypnotic film shows how one house disappears and a new one appears, while a mechanical narrator’s voice accompanies and time-stamps each frame, taking its viewer to a new land where time passes even as everything stands still.

Screenings in Copenhagen