17/10/2013 - Scandinavia’s largest international documentary film festival instigates new prize for investigative journalism

The largest international documentary film festival in Scandinavia, Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX – which last year registered 51,800 admissions – will screen more than 200 films during its 11^th edition, which takes place between November 7-17.

Festival director Tine Fischer is looking forward to the most political programme so far. “We have two sections curated by artists who are also political activists, and we are instigating a prize for a critical and journalistic documentary,” she explained.

Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei has selected 10 films for the programme reflecting the artist’s role and responsibility towards the establishment; the Focus on China includes the world premiere of his own Stay Home, about a Chinese 10-year-old girl who is refused medical care for a HIV infection, because she is the family’s second child. The American activist duo The Yes Men have chosen eight films dealing with mainstream media.

This year’s CPH:DOX will zoom in on some of the world’s hotspots. Syrian director Hisham al-Zouki’s Untold Stories follows battles between the people and the Assad regime; UK director Callum Macrae’s No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka the civil war, where 70,000 people were killed; US director Shaul Schwarz’s Narco Cultura drug cartels murdering thousands of citizens in the Mexican city of Juarez, when taking over the city.

12 films will compete for the F:ACT Award, the new prize for investigative documentaries established by the festival and the Union of Danish Journalists. Among the contenders are Danish director Karen Stokkedal Poulsen’s The Agreement, about an EU mediator’s efforts in Serbia and Kosovo, and US director Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, about Julian Assange and his hacktivists.