Unique access to film is what is written in the festival press about the opening film of CPH:DOX 2025. Unique access to former General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg during his last year in that position. And this is what Gulliksen had to his compatriot, access. Example: Oh… I had forgotten that you would be here, Stoltenberg says a couple of times, when he enters the car waiting for him, to take him to the next meeting. Gulliksen is there with the camera and questions.

Actually, Stoltenberg entering cars and getting out of cars are the most used scenes in the film about the very sympathetic Norwegian diplomat, who wanted to end his Brussels career to come home to wife and family, but President Biden convinced him to take one more year of hard work.

Stoltenberg, a warmhearted man, goes to Kyiv, meets Zelenskyj – great scenes in the train(s) trips to Ukraine – good scenes with his advisors in the office in Brussels – Stoltenberg having breakfast quite alone in his NATO salon – Stoltenberg trying to make the Hungarian troublemaker, Putin-lover Orban, refrain from making trouble at one of big NATO meetings, where Stoltenberg aims for a unity FOR Ukraine.

The meetings and the themes discussed at them are well known and the film structure is a classic cinéma vérité style, it’s a well known built visual monument of a great statesman, a diplomat indeed, but how close do we really get to him – yes, once, with archive from the emotional and intelligent speech Stoltenberg made in 2011 to commemorate the victims of Utøya. Now he is Minister of Finances in Norway… Does that give him more of the rest, he deserves after NATO and the eternal traveling…

Norway, Belgium, 2025, 100 mins.

Jeg har sakset lidt i en pressemeddelelse fra cph:dox for at fremhæve festivalens landsdækkende success, hvor mere and halvdelen af Danmarks kommuner er med i festivalen. Sådan skal det være skriver denne tidligere ansatte ved Statens Filmcentral, som netop var landsdækkende i sin virksomhed med filmvisninger i skoler, kulturhuse, biblioteker og biografer, en gang imellem. Nu er dokumentargenrens popularitet and festivalens suveræne sans for promotion baggrunden for at film, som vi københavnere kan se på det store lærred også er at finde landsdækkende. Det er filmpolitik, det er kulturpolitik og det manglede bare! Her er klip fra pressemeddelelsen:

Vild vækstkurve: DOX:DANMARK – den landsdækkende udgave af dokumentarfilmfestivalen CPH:DOX – har på få år femdoblet sin størrelse og når i 2025 ud til rekordmange danskere.

I år er der synkront med festivalen i København lokale dokumentarfilmfestivaler i mere end halvdelen af Danmarks kommuner, der vil give biografgæster over hele landet mulighed for at opleve dokumentarfilm om alt fra Putin og Netanyahu over Cirkeline og Prins Joachim.

CPH:DOX og DOX:DANMARK foregår fra den 19.-30. marts

Stor interesse på tværs af hele landet

På blot tre et halvt år er CPH:DOX’ nationale udgave DOX:DANMARK vokset til mere end femdobbelt størrelse. Tilbage i efteråret 2021, hvor festivalen søsatte initiativet, deltog 9 kommuner – i år er antallet steget til intet mindre end 54. Dermed er mere end halvdelen af landets 98 kommuner en del af dokumentarfilmfestivalen, som også er en af de største på verdensplan, og som hvert år præsenterer både dokumentarfilm, talks, debatter, kunst og en bred vifte af andre events. 

”En filmfestival som CPH:DOX skal være for alle danskere, uanset hvor de bor. Derfor er vi virkelig stolte over, at så mange kommuner nu bakker op om DOX:DANMARK og giver deres borgere mulighed for at deltage i deres egen, lokale filmfestival. Det vidner om, at der er stor interesse for dokumentarfilmgenren, og for alle de vigtige samtaler, der følger med,” lyder det fra Niklas Engstrøm, der er kunstnerisk direktør i CPH:DOX.

Fra Putin til Prins Joachim

Uanset hvor i landet man bor, er der god chance for, at man i en af nærområdets biografer kan opleve dokumentarfilm og forskellige dokumentarrelaterede events under DOX:DANMARK. Faktisk er det over 100 forskellige biografer og kulturinstitutioner, fordelt i de 54 kommuner, der inviterer deres lokale publikum indenfor. Biograferne vælger selv, hvilke film de vil vise ud fra en liste på mere end 20 film fra årets festivalprogram.

En af de dokumentarfilm, som mange biografer i DOX:DANMARK gerne vil vise, er Mr. Nobody mod Putin (foto) hvor vi følger en modig skolelærer, der i al hemmelighed filmer, hvad der sker i det russiske skolesystem i kølvandet på Putins invasion af Ukraine. Men mange biografer i DOX:DANMARK er naturligvis også interesseret i film fra egen hjemmebane. Flere steder vil man således kunne opleve dokumentarfilmen Hærvejen, hvor Prins Joachim og forfatter Steffen Jacobsen begiver sig ud på den danske vandresti, mens de taler, reflekterer og diskuterer om stort og småt.  

Danmarks dokumentarglade biografgængere kan også se frem til blandt andet Facing War om Jens Stoltenberg, Kærestebreve fra Thy om det danske band Ganger, Take The Money and Run om Jens Haanings bemærkelsesværdige kunstværk, der endte i en stor retssag – og rigtig mange andre. 

Meget mere end dokumentarfilm

Men CPH:DOX nøjes ikke bare med at vise film. Ud af de mere end 300 visninger arrangerer festivalen også omtrent 150 skræddersyede events efter visningerne, hvilket kan være alt fra instruktør-besøg til brætspilsaftener, rock- og jazzkoncerter,  og ekspertoplæg – blandt andet med kendte navne som den tidligere danske toppolitiker og nu direktør i Tænketanken Europa Lykke Friis, kunstner Jens Haaning, tidligere fodboldspiller Jonathan Richter, forfatter og Rusland-kender Leif Davidsen, musiker Karen Mukupa, livsstilsekspert Flemming Møldrup og ikke mindst hele Danmarks yndlings-ægtefælle fra ‘Gift ved første blik’, Morten Mortensen. 

Der skal også være plads til de skæve events, såsom en lokal rengøringsdame der læser sine digte op inden visning af Kærestebreve fra Thy, hekseritualer i forbindelse med filmen Heks, og en lokal danseskole der laver K-pop dans i forbindelse med visningen af dokumentarfilmen Forever We Are Young om K-pop-gruppen BTS – og rigtig meget mere. 

Alt sammen arrangeres i tæt samarbejde med de lokale kulturaktører, og de individuelle programmer vil fremgå af biografernes egne hjemmesider og på cphdox.dk/doxdanmark 

I was invited by Davis Simanis Jr. to come to Riga to teach documentary for a week at the new premises of the Academy of Culture, where Davis, a prominent fiction and documentary director, has signed a contract of four years to be the Rector of the Academy that (Wikipedia) is “a higher education establishment in Latvia offering various bachelor’s, magister and doctoral degree programmes on cultural subjects. The academy was founded in 1990.” The new place includes several buildings and is said to have been the factory of the cigarette company Prince… Danish.

Davis – see photo, to the right – took me and producer Uldis Cekulis (left) around and proudly we were on the rooftop, fifth floor, perfect for summer receptions.

I had 13 students for the five days, some were there all the time, others had to leave some times as they had work to do in the industry. I managed to have one hour meeting with all the them to know a bit more about them and to hear which project they are working on as part of their study – they have to finish a short documentary. The themes were many, portraits of course, a child with autism, a family, “do you want to have children or not”, death, city transport, immigrants doing Wolt or Bolt, jobs that Latvians don’t want to touch and the scout movement in the country during and after Soviet Union.

And I showed them clips and full films – started with “Bridges of Time” to tell the students about Herz Frank and Uldis Brauns, the intellectual filmmaker and the poetic filmmaker. They were already pretty much – from their Master’s Programme – informed about the Direct Cinema and Vérité, so I skipped the wonderful film that legendary Peter Wintonick made about the latter, with stars like Richard Leacock, Maysles and Pennebaker.

Historically Latvian documentary is strong. I mentioned Herz Frank and Uldis Brauns, I have written about Juris Podnieks and – still alive – the masters Ivars Seleckis, and Ivars Zviedris, and with producers like Guntis Trekteris and Uldis Cekulis, new talents will get their chance to develop projects. Not to forget, Latvia has its National Film Centre that functions well giving money for production and taking care of sending films to international festivals.

Thanks for the invitation Davis Simanis, hope the students got some inspiration.

Two first names are the directors followed by the producers.

I was in the multiplex cinema Palads in Copenhagen last night. The owner Nordisk Film showed the Ukrainian Oscar nominee in the documentary section, “Porcelain War”, in collaboration with Ukraine House in Denmark. The majority of the audience, I guess, were Ukrainians living in Copenhagen – where were the Danish filmmakers…?

Anyway, fine film, warm in atmosphere when we were following the protagonists, three artists; two of them making ceramics with inspiration from nature and third one a painter. Beautiful images, many drone shots of nature – again and again interrupted by sequences from the Russian full scale invasion and its consequences, bombings, corpses on the roads, we have seen it before, unfortunately, in the three years the war has been part of the Ukrainian daily life. Sound of sirens every day but Anya continues to do her ceramic art, most often they are amazing colored snails, who for the film have small animation parts of animals and people on the sculptures. Creativity!

I think the filmmakers should have refrained from the effect sound to the war images, on the other hand the music is fantastic, first of all the songs performed by the quartet DakhaBrakha, whose voices we hear and who are in the picture, while the credits are rolling at the end of the film. Their music for the film is published.

“Porcelain War” is one the five Oscar nominated, I saw four of them, the winner you will know Monday morning, if you live in Denmark.

Ukraine and other countries, 2024, 87 mins.

“With love from the front” (eng. My Dear Theo) on CPH:DOX 2025

This is a text that I took from the FB of Alisa Kovalenko, if you go to that you will also notice the many people Alisa is thanking for the encouragement to make the film:

I didn’t believe at the beginning that from these small fragments of the past, letters and a small part of the shot fragrant footage on the front, could be born a movie, something intact, some fusion of memory, time…

After all, like so many of our other movies in the last 11 years, this movie should not have been… It was neither filmed nor intended to become a movie… In the first months of the full-scale war, cinema seemed to have lost all meaning and I was doing completely different tasks, but the camera stayed around as usual, just to capture some little moments to remember. She spent most of her time in her backpack, in sandbags, in blinders and trenches, lying and filled with smoke, dust and sand, lying as a silent reminder of the past, which was distant and pushed by a new reality. I wrote more than I filmed, wrote many letters then to my 5 year old son Theo in case i die and have something important to leave to him about me and all of us…

Only later did I begin to realize the deeper value of what I managed to preserve. People very close to me, brothers killed on the frontline they were also parents.. And I thought a lot about this movie, as a memory town between us and our children. After all, most of us parents have come to the frontline for our children’s future and it was important for me to remember that… So this movie for me became first and foremost about the light, tenderness, love that is so important to leave in the hearts of our children, our loved ones, even in death…

Today we can finally officially say that the world premiere of “With Love From The Front” (eng. My dear Theo) will be held on March 23 in Copenhagen, at one of the best festivals of documentary cinema, – CPH: DOX. It is particularly nice to have a Prime Minister in Denmark, a country that is one of the few European countries that provides financial support to Ukraine for weapons, which is in fact the most important support for our defense.

Pleased to invite everyone who will be at CPH:DOX for our premiere screening.

First thanks for the existence of this film Marina Stepanska which felt something special and valuable in my materials, otherwise all this would remain in the archives indefinitely.

A big and warm thank you to everyone with whom we worked on the film, everyone who inspired and supported, all my Ukrainian and French families.

And a separate big thank you to my dear brothers who have been with me side by side these first months of the full-scale war on the frontline.

passed away the other day, 70 years old. A brilliant documentary director who expanded the Danish way of storytelling in that genre through his focus on the essayistic approach. Poetic reflections on human life, philosophical, superb in their visual interpretation that were made together with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle in the trilogy that Jens Loftager first of all will be remembered for: “Words” (1994), “War” (2003) and “Faith” (2017). My colleague Allan Berg (who died last year in March) put together intros to the trilogy, in English and Danish:

Two widely different images of religious faith create a contrasting and thought-provoking totality in Jens Loftager’s new film, “Faith”. The Danish priest Karsten plays music to his confirmation students to help them trust their own qualities and dare to flourish in life. At the same time we meet three Japanese Buddhists, who never had that opportunity, but who are now thinking about their lost youth when they were members of the religious Aum group which committed a terrorist attack in Tokyo in 1995. Across stages of life and cultures, ‘Faith’ explores how religious faith can both make people fit for life and able to understand ourselves better, but also push us to make extreme choices, which we will later regret and find difficult to understand. The film is the last part of Loftager’s trilogy, which started with ‘Words’ (1994) and continued with ‘War’ (2003).

KOMMENTAR

Jens Loftagers nye film får premiere på CPH:DOX. Den fornemme plakat er lavet af Claus Lynggaard, som også har tegnet filmens grafik, så Tro venter vi nu på med spænding, den er jo noget så sjældent som sidste værk i en trilogi af filosofiske filmessays, konklusionen på én filmkunstnerisk tanke fastholdt gennem mere end to årtier.

Hvis man er så heldig at have adgang til et uni-login kan man forberede sig på en virkelig lykkelig måde ved at gense eller måske for første gang se trilogiens to første film Ord (1994) og Krig (2003) på FILMCENTRALENS smukke og effektive streaming…

ORD (1994)

”En skildring af ordets magt – og afmagt. En påvisning af ordets undertrykkende – og befriende muligheder. Med Salman Rushdie og Václav Havel som toneangivende symboler veksler filmen mellem statements fra en række verdensberømte forfattere, arkivmateriale fra brændpunkter i det 20. århundredes kamp for (og undertrykkelse af) ytringsfrihed – fiktioner, bl.a. “Tusind og een nats eventyr” i hvilke Scheherezade fortæller historier for at overleve. Udover Havel og Rushdie medvirker Joseph Brodsky, Paul Auster, Günter Wallraff, Mario Vargas Llosa, Villy Sørensen, Inger Christensen, Julio Llamazares, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Kemal Kurspahic (fra Sarajevo-avisen Oslobodenje) og Aziz Nesin.” (Filmcentralen)

KRIG (2003)

”Det tyvende århundrede har i vores del af verden været præget af krig, ikke mindst de to verdenskrige og konflikten i eks-Jugoslavien. For de, der oplever en krig, repræsenterer den destruktion og død, men under rædslerne trives også håb og næstekærlighed. I filmen mødes billedernes skønhed og beretningernes gru i et forsøg på at forstå menneskets adfærd og oplevelse af sig selv under og efter krigens ekstremer. Med afsæt i optagelser fra krigenes skuepladser fortæller en række vidner om tab, smerte, angst, afmagt, dilemmaer, ydmygelser, kampe og kz-lejre. Men også om betydningen af at forblive menneske i alle situationer.” (Filmcentralen)

filmcentralen.dk or filmstriben.dk – if Danish citizen – is where you can find films by Jens Loftager. Or go to the Video Library of the Danish Film Institute.