Saunas, Funky­town and the con­scious­ness of plants at CPH:DOX 2023

The Copen­hagen Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val, known as CPH:DOX, has quick­ly estab­lished itself as one of the most pro­gres­sive and excit­ing doc­u­men­tary fes­ti­vals in the world, con­sis­tent­ly show­cas­ing films at the lead­ing edge of the doc­u­men­tary form, and even embrac­ing a will­ing­ness to dis­re­gard the often rigid bound­aries between fic­tion and non-fic­tion film­mak­ing. In 2023, the fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ed its 20^th edi­tion, which includ­ed a new place in the cal­en­dar (Spring, instead of Autumn which put it in com­pe­ti­tion with the Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val Ams­ter­dam, or IDFA), and a main com­pe­ti­tion pro­gramme made up, for the first time, entire­ly of world premieres.

As a first-time attendee of CPH:DOX I was quick to dis­cov­er that great cin­e­ma lies not just in the festival’s main com­pe­ti­tion; so in that spir­it that, here is a run­down of high­lights from this year’s edition.

Anna Hints’ first fea­ture is an inti­mate depic­tion of care, empa­thy, and sis­ter­hood. Her cam­era favours an inti­mate focus on women’s bod­ies and faces, which cel­e­brates their soft­ness and warmth, and finds plea­sure in every curve as they share sto­ries of sex, abuse, love, and arousal. Smoke Sauna Sis­ter­hood is also, as sug­gest­ed by the title, an encounter with an ancient cul­tur­al prac­tice, in which the Eston­ian smoke sauna acts as a site of sol­i­dar­i­ty and soul cleans­ing. What is most strik­ing, how­ev­er, in a film full of strik­ing imagery, is the way Hints explores what it means to dis­trib­ute the bur­den of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. In the sauna’s close quar­ters, where we might expect claus­tro­pho­bia, repeat­ed­ly shift­ing our view to the lis­ten­er instead of the speak­er is a rad­i­cal ges­ture of openness.

It’s one thing for a film to accu­rate­ly cap­ture the expe­ri­ence of a wild night out. It’s anoth­er for it to under­stand its under­ly­ing emo­tion­al stakes. Ben­jamin Mullinkosson’s The Last Year of Dark­ness, which earned a spe­cial men­tion from the NEXT:WAVE jury, is a film about these stakes. Hav­ing lived in the Chi­nese city of Cheng­du him­self, Mullinkosson’s por­trait of its queer under­ground par­ty scene, whose nexus is a club called Funky­town, is steeped in lov­ing famil­iar­i­ty. His cam­era knows these char­ac­ters – who include, among oth­ers, a baby drag queen, and a bi-curi­ous Russ­ian DJ – and it bal­ances an inti­mate, prob­ing view with respect­ful detach­ment, like a friend who knows when to give anoth­er space. When the film begins Funky­town is in trou­ble, though we don’t know it just yet, so there’s no telling when these nights of ecsta­sy might sud­den­ly be a rel­ic of the past. For Chengdu’s queer youth, there is a trag­ic irony in know­ing that while no one club can define their spir­its, there may soon be no place for those spir­its to be tru­ly free.

Nico­las Peduzzi’s por­trait of a psy­chi­a­trist in a strug­gling, under­fund­ed Parisian hos­pi­tal is a vital report on the health­care indus­try with­out ever resort­ing to preach­i­ness. Our hero, Jamal, is not yet 40, suf­fers from exhaus­tion and back­ache, yet whose com­mit­ment to his patients nev­er wavers. By focus­ing on one doc­tor On the Edge, which earned a spe­cial men­tion from the DOX:AWARD jury, is allowed the free­dom to be both an engross­ing char­ac­ter study and a sharp social com­ment. Whether he’s telling them hard truths about their treat­ment, or lead­ing the­atre exer­cis­es and Shake­speare lessons, Jamal’s prac­tice is the embod­i­ment of per­se­ver­ance in spite of face­less gov­ern­ment that might rather his patients be left behind.

Alexan­der Mihalkovich and Han­na Badzi­a­ka won this year’s DOX:AWARD, CPH:DOX’s top prize, with Moth­er­land, a stark and involv­ing por­trait of mount­ing mil­i­tary and police vio­lence in Russia’s neigh­bor­ing ally, Belarus. There are dual mean­ings to be found in the title. The first most obvi­ous­ly ref­er­ences Belarus’s noto­ri­ous­ly vio­lent and abu­sive mil­i­tary cul­ture, which demands the devo­tion of count­less young men to the ​“moth­er­land”. But trac­ing the periph­ery of the film is a dif­fer­ent kind of moth­er­land. Here a series of let­ters, based on Mikalkovich’s own expe­ri­ences in the mil­i­tary, are the dri­ving force of one mother’s quest for jus­tice for the death of her son. Her sto­ry­line runs par­al­lel with that of a group of angry young adults wis­en­ing up to Belarus’ state-sanc­tioned vio­lence; both illu­mi­nate a con­stel­la­tion of injus­tices and bur­geon­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty in a coun­try enter­ing its rebel­lious phase.

A trio of short doc­u­men­taries, col­lec­tive­ly enti­tled Queer Futures, made their World Pre­mieres in the Spe­cial Pre­sen­ta­tions sec­tion. Each con­struct a style and visu­al syn­tax thought­ful­ly tai­lored to their sub­ject mat­ter, rang­ing from lush, lan­guid expres­sion­ism in Sasha Wortzel’s How to Car­ry Water, a por­trait of queer, fat pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Shoog McDaniel; imme­di­ate and live­ly real­ism in Twig­gy Puc­ci Garçon’s MnM, a lov­ing pro­file of her ball­room per­former ​“daugh­ters”, Mer­maid and Milan; and a blend of relat­able direct­ness and know­ing play­ful­ness in Britt Fry­er and Noah Schamus’, The Script, which con­structs fan­ta­sy (and night­mare) enact­ments of trans health­care scenarios.

Dif­fer­ent though their visions of the future may be, all signs point toward opti­mism, as exem­pli­fied by the première’s evening of par­ty­ing, cel­e­bra­tion, and mutu­al sup­port. The pre­mière coin­cid­ed with the festival’s Queer Lab: a week­end of talks, work­shops, and com­mu­ni­ty build­ing amongst queer artists in the doc­u­men­tary space, aimed at cen­ter­ing joy and lib­er­a­tion instead of trau­ma. If Queer Futures sets the prece­dent for this kind of new­ly imag­ined queer doc­u­men­tary prac­tice, then the future is bright.

Jesse McLean’s film, Light Needs, is inter­est­ed in seri­ous, exis­ten­tial inquiry, so it’s all to the film’s ben­e­fit that her philo­soph­i­cal prob­ing is con­veyed with such delight and whim­sy (at one point lit­er­al­ly giv­ing voice to a group of plants and let­ting them have a con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er). Light Needs is a mul­ti­fac­eted inquiry into the con­scious­ness of plants; by tak­ing us on a jour­ney into the many forms and meth­ods of plant care and own­er­ship, the film arrives not at a new dis­cov­ery or rev­e­la­tion of, but at a refresh­ing­ly lucid argu­ment for, the unknowa­bil­i­ty of plant life.

Agni­ia Galdanova’s Queen­dom, which won the NEXT:WAVE award, does some­thing quite spe­cial. What begins as an inti­mate pro­file of Gena, a queer, Russ­ian per­for­mance artist who stages con­fronting protest-per­for­mances in elab­o­rate cos­tumes on the streets of Moscow, slow­ly becomes a rad­i­cal exten­sion of Gena’s artis­tic own prac­tice. We don’t mere­ly watch her per­for­mances through Galdanova’s eyes – we begin to expe­ri­ence them the way Gena does, as fraught, night­mar­ish embod­i­ments of the impact of Russia’s oppres­sive con­ser­vatism. Giv­en the stress of polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and the threat of dai­ly harass­ment, it’s a small mir­a­cle that Gena has the ener­gy to cre­ate such arrest­ing and fero­cious art, and it’s our priv­i­lege to wit­ness it.

CPH:DOX 2023 ran from 15 to 26 March, 2023, in Copen­hagen, Denmark.