All posts tagged: CPH:DOX

‘Where the Silence Is Heard’ CPH:DOX Doc Interview on Family Trauma

‘Where the Silence Is Heard’ CPH:DOX Doc Interview on Family Trauma

Published by Daniella Wilson

Where the Silence Is Heard is the evocative title of the debut feature by directors Gabriela Pena and Picho García. But silence can be very painful and be a sign of trauma, as audiences will find out. “Returning to a house in Chile abandoned in exile, a granddaughter traces three generations of memory to understand how love, fear, and silence are inherited,” reads a logline for the documentary, which world premieres on Tuesday, March 17 in the Next:Wave program of the 23rd edition of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, or CPH:DOX. That granddaughter is Pena. “Between her grandparents’ tenderness and her Barcelona-based mother’s emotional distance, she begins to question how love can endure when shaped by fear, absence, and silence.” Where the Silence Is Heard follows her journey of renovating the house and piecing together her family’s history, which has been colored by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, exile, and decades of silence. Where the Silence is Heard is “an aesthetically beautiful story about inherited trauma,” highlights the CPH:DOX website. “An original cinematic exploration of memories, …

‘Something Familiar’ Doc Film Interview at CPH:DOX on Mother, Trauma

‘Something Familiar’ Doc Film Interview at CPH:DOX on Mother, Trauma

Published by Daniella Wilson

Rachel Taparjan is a British Romanian filmmaker and academic in North East England, working as a senior lecturer in social work at Teesside University. In her film work, she has directed documentary shorts, but on Tuesday, March 17, she will world premiere her debut feature in the main competition of the 23rd edition of Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX. Something Familiar follows the director as she helps a woman, Mihaela, search for her birth mother in Romania by traveling to the orphanage where they were both adopted. On the journey, she gets drawn into her own family’s history and trauma and uncovers a painful legacy that hovers like a dark cloud over the women in the family. Something Familiar intersperses the journey to Romania with scenes of the filmmaker enlisting, or casting, actresses to sit in for her mother, whom she never really knew, for conversations in chairs set up across from each other.  Family bonds, absence, and trauma loom large as themes in the doc, but so does self-authorship. To be more precise, Something Familiar …

“They Want to Be Heard and Seen”

“They Want to Be Heard and Seen”

Published by Daniella Wilson

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are denied the right to study, work, or speak freely, a group of young women risk their lives to form a secret reading circle And inspired by Anne Frank’s experiences in 1940s Amsterdam, they start to write their own diaries. For these women, a dystopia is reality. Now, they are sharing it with the world in The Secret Reading Club of Kabul, a documentary directed by Shakiba Adil and Elina Hirvonen and partially filmed by the women themselves. The film, described as “an intimate and confidential testimony to the power of art to keep hope and humanism alive,” world premieres on Monday, March 16, in the Nordic:DOX competition program of the 23rd edition of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX. “We experience with shocking clarity what is at stake when the Taliban storms a hidden school or arrests young girls for practicing martial arts,” the festival website highlights about the doc. The story is interwoven with insight into director Adil’s own journey. As a girl, she grew up under the first Taliban …

How ‘Arctic Link’ Brings the Internet to Life on an Epic Scale With Images and Sound

How ‘Arctic Link’ Brings the Internet to Life on an Epic Scale With Images and Sound

Published by Daniella Wilson

Imagine a remote corner of Alaska finally getting connected to the internet, and you can witness it! Interested? If so, are you wondering what this change will mean for the islanders? Filmmaker Ian Purnell has you covered on both fronts with his debut feature Arctic Link, a documentary of epic proportions in more ways than one. The film world premieres on Monday, March 16 in the main competition program of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, whose 23rd edition runs through March 22.  Reminder how we mentioned that the doc was epic? “In the Arctic Ocean, a colossal ship drifts along, while thousands of kilometers of fiber optic cable slide from the deck into the dark depths of the sea,” reads a synopsis.” If you need more evidence of the project’s scale, let’s just mention that the filmmaker worked on it for 10 years. The CPH:DOX website even highlights this about Arctic Link: “Everything is enormous – from the massive cables to the images and phenomenal sound design – but the human scale never disappears from …

‘Whispers in May’ Interview on Improv Doc Film About Girlhood: CPH:DOX

‘Whispers in May’ Interview on Improv Doc Film About Girlhood: CPH:DOX

Published by Daniella Wilson

Is it a documentary? Is it improvised fiction? No, it is both! And it is called Whispers in May, the second feature film from Dongnan Chen (Singing in the Wilderness), which explores the transition from girlhood to womanhood through the eyes of three Chinese girls on a road trip. One of the three girls is Qihuo, who has a secret, namely that she has just had her first menstruation. That makes her ready for the traditional “Changing Skirt” coming-of-age ceremony. With her migrant worker parents away, she goes on a voyage with her two best friends to buy a skirt. Whispers in May blends documentary with an improvised fictional journey to follow them and take us to the edge of girlhood and womanhood. Whispers in May will world premiere on Sunday, March 15, in the main competition lineup of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.  Jia Zhao of Muyi Film produced the hybrid doc with Chen’s Tail Bite Tail Films in co-production with Malin Hüber for Her Film in Sweden and Heejung Oh for Seesaw Pictures in South Korea.  Chen met …

‘Amazomania’ Doc Interview on Brazil Tribe, White Man’s Gaze: CPH:DOX

‘Amazomania’ Doc Interview on Brazil Tribe, White Man’s Gaze: CPH:DOX

Published by Daniella Wilson

A hazardous expedition to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, filmed in 1996, becomes a cultural and moral minefield in Amazomania, a thought-provoking documentary in which Swedish director Nathan Grossman (I Am Greta, Climate in Therapy) explores the white man’s gaze and turns the camera on colonial legacy and the film itself. The doc, world premiering in the main competition of the 23rd edition of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, on Monday, March 16, is a tale of two halves. In the first part of the film, Grossman rewinds the tapes of the 1996 trip, organized by a Brazilian civil servant and Swedish journalist Erling Söderström to meet the Korubo tribe, who chose to live far away from civilization. The expedition ended in a first encounter, with the footage hailed as a sensation, rare images from a long-hidden world. The second part of Amazomania follows Söderström on his journey back to the tribe 30 years later. But the trip doesn’t quite go as hoped. In the process, a profound misunderstanding is revealed. And the Korubo …

‘Something Familiar’ Doc on Family, Trauma Romanian Orphans (Trailer)

‘Something Familiar’ Doc on Family, Trauma Romanian Orphans (Trailer)

Published by Daniella Wilson

For Something Familiar, her debut feature, Rachel Taparjan picked a topic that is not only very personal to her, but also turned out to be full of trauma. Just read the logline for the documentary: “While helping a woman search for her birth mother, Taparjan is drawn into her own family history, uncovering a dark legacy that has loomed over its women.” The doc will world premiere in the main competition of the 23rd edition of Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX, on Tuesday, March 17. “After Mihaela reaches out to Taparjan to help her find her birth mother, they set off for Romania, returning to the orphanage where they were both adopted,” reads a synopsis for Something Familiar. “What Mihaela uncovers in the search makes her question her entire identity. It also draws Rachel into her own journey through her family’s past, unveiling a painful legacy that has loomed over its women, which they shared despite the separation.” In what feels like an attempt to find some clarity or catharsis, or simply to explore possibilities, the filmmaker also enlists actresses to …

‘Burning Voice’ Doc Film on Iraqi Women’s Rights: CPH:DOX Interview

‘Burning Voice’ Doc Film on Iraqi Women’s Rights: CPH:DOX Interview

Published by Daniella Wilson

Tamara Amer is fighting “a fierce battle against negative social control, a culture of silence, and the oppression of women in Iraq, where she grew up.” You have to watch the new documentary Burning Voice, though, to get a more detailed picture that the press notes for the film hint at. After all, since founding the online platform Iraqi Women Rights in 2011, Amer has used her voice and her dual position as an insider and outsider in Baghdad to help educate Iraqi women about their rights. Now, her work and her struggles are coming to the big screen. Burning Voice, directed by Anna Bruun Nørager in her feature debut, world premieres on Friday, March 13 in the Human:Rights Competition of the 23rd edition of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. “She has inspired Iraqi women to dare to break the silence and report violations,” a synopsis notes about Amer. “But it is far from safe for women in Iraq to speak out about such issues. Tamara herself has lived with harassment and serious threats for over a …

‘The Cord’ CPH:DOX Doc Film on Maternity Warrior, Solidarity Interview

‘The Cord’ CPH:DOX Doc Film on Maternity Warrior, Solidarity Interview

Published by Daniella Wilson

In the new documentary feature The Cord (Le cordon), French journalist-turned-filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé takes us to Venezuela and inside its “broken health system where life hangs by a thread,” a description of the doc highlights. “Carolina rises as a maternity warrior. Drawing strength from her past, she relentlessly preserves the vital cord between pregnant women and their babies.” After all, “giving birth has become a life-threatening act” for the underprivileged in the country, the press notes for the film explain. Carolina fights this crisis with seemingly endless energy and the resilience network she has created in her neighborhood, “leading women in the fight for bodily autonomy and safe birthing conditions.” Her vision is to create a space where ancestral practices and Western medicine come together in a community-led model of care and a “place where women reclaim autonomy over their bodies, their births, and their futures.” The Cord world premieres on Saturday, March 14, in the main competition of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, which runs through March 22. Hervé served as director and cinematographer, …

‘All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea’ Doc Film Clip

‘All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea’ Doc Film Clip

Published by Daniella Wilson

British filmmaker Jeanie Finlay (Your Fat Friend, Seahorse, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, The Great Hip Hop Hoax) has made a name for herself as a creator who gives a voice to the voiceless and tell cinematic stories about people who may not be commonly seen and heard on screens, big and small. Her new documentary, All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea, is no different. World premiering in the F:ACT competition of the 23rd edition of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, on March 17, it takes audiences to her native Teesside in North East England to dive into a David and Goliath story of epic proportions. “Fisherman Stan Rennie has worked the same stretch of coastline, where the river meets the sea, for over 50 years; the trade has been in his family for centuries,” reads a synopsis for the doc. “So when a vast tide of poisoned crabs and lobsters washes ashore like a biblical plague in the wake of a new Brexit-fueled development along that same coastline, Stan’s world is turned upside-down overnight. …