Danish Documentary

When Danish filmmaker Lea Glob first portrayed Apolonia Sokol in 2009, she appeared to be leading a storybook life. The talented Apolonia was born in an underground theater in Paris and grew up in an artists’ community—the ultimate bohemian existence. In her 20s, she studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, one of the most prestigious art academies in Europe. Over the years, Lea Glob kept returning to film the charismatic Apolonia and a special bond developed between the two young women.

Deep beneath the surface in the Syrian province of Ghouta, a group of female doctors have established an underground field hospital. Under the supervision of paediatrician Dr. Amani and her staff of doctors and nurses, hope is restored for some of the thousands of children and civilian victims of the ruthless Syrian civil war.

Right outside of Moscow – home to the highest number of billionaires pr. capita – you’ll find the largest junkyard in the world: The Svalka. It’s a hard place run by the Russian mafia. And it's where Yula lives with her mother, her friends and many other people. Life is tough in the Svalka, but it’s also a place where beauty and humanity can arise from the most unlikely conditions. It is from this place that Yula dreams of escaping and changing her life, even if it seems impossible. Oscar-nominated director Hanna Polak followed Yula for 14 years, bringing us along on Yula's journey to achieve this dream.

Innocence tells the story of children who resisted to be enlisted but capitulated. Their stories were never told as they died during their service. Through a narration based on their haunting diaries, the film depicts their inner turmoil. It interweaves first-hand military images, key moments from childhood until enlistment and home videos of the deceased soldiers whose stories are silenced and seen as a national threat.

From massive waves to melting ice, filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky travels around the world to capture stunning images of the beauty and raw power of water.

In this new documentary you get to follow the life of Ekstra Bladet's editorial staff through one of the papers most turbulent years with catastrophic readership numbers and a long row of controversial agenda-setting cases. From the common journalistic staff being pushed to deliver the daily front-page stories, to Poul Madsen in management who has to make the drastic decisions regarding the papers continued existence. We get to see up close how the paper's staff handles the many ethical dilemmas they face everyday. We see what it takes for news to make the front page and in the paper's machine room we get to see the drastic death battle for the 110 years old paper play out - The question is: Will there be a place for Ekstra Bladet in the media image of tomorrow?

A poignant portrait of a family of asylum seekers desperate to start a new life, but stalled in bureaucratic limbo.

A cinematic, character-driven insight to what it meant to produce and to own a car in communist times: the Socialist propaganda dreams and the hard reality of living that dream. The freedom that these slow and clumsy vehicles were giving to their owners; the cars as an instrument in the Cold War battle; legends and homemade tune-ups as an attempt to stand at least a little bit off the crowd.

Although scientists and agribusiness have started touting edible insects as the future of sustainable food, the notion of eating bugs hasn’t exactly gained much popularity among the general public. Head Chef Ben Reade and Lead Researcher Josh Evans from the Nordic Food Lab in Denmark are looking to change that. With a focus on food diversity and deliciousness, they set out on a globe-trotting mission to take on the politics of the palate, sampling grubs in the Australian outback, pillaging giant wasp nests in Japan and attending food expos where entrepreneurs pitch their flavorless farmed crickets. Along the way, they put their own haute cuisine spin on local insect delicacies, whipping up dishes like cricket and grasshopper ravioli, maggot cheese gelato and bee larva ceviche.

Making film wears down director Lars von Trier, but he is not able to live without them. In the documentary film this Danish auteur’s all-consuming love affection for film is portrayed. Now he is standing at a cross-road. While film as we know it is dying.

You could be forgiven for mistaking Charlie Siem for James Bond. Whether he's driving an orange Porsche to his cliff-top Monaco mansion, ordering martinis or looking suave in a designer suit, he is a man on a mission. It isn't to hunt down SPECTRE, but to find perfection in everything he does. Whether it's performing on stage, recording albums, or selecting a suit, Charlie demands the best, of himself and others. Despite an entourage dubbed ‘Charlie's Angels', he's lonesome, and complains that people can't relate to him. Danish filmmaker Eva Mulvad, with patience and panache, delves into this life of privilege to find commonalities of ambition and desire.

Three Russian women in their 30s who all seek the same: security, a higher social status and eternal happiness. Not an easy wish to fulfill in today's Russia, where the patriarchy dominates. So our heroines take matters into their own hands and join a course in the art of seducing a man - preferably a rich one. Seven years of recordings paint a sometimes tragicomic picture of gender roles and femininity in Putin's Russia.

Ahmad Jalali Farahani works as a journalist in Iran. On 27 December 2009, he sees an innocent man being killed on the street, but neither Ahmad or his colleagues dare write about the murder. The journalists are hard-pressed and struggle daily against censorship and control, and even the otherwise conservative newspaper Tehran Emrooz gets to know the wrath of President Ahmadinejad, when it is ordered closed after the publication of one single critical picture.

In 1543 the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the prevailing view of the world: he claimed that the Earth was not the immovable centre of the world but a planet in orbit around the sun. To the Christian church this was a heresy that contradicted the Bible. For centuries to come great scientists like Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton wrestled with the question of a moving earth in the face of opposition from the church, which sentenced Galileo to house arrest and burned the philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. Their struggle led not only to a new view of the world, but also to the modern natural sciences and thereby the way we view the world today.