News

Some of the biggest names in nonfiction film are heading to Poland for the 22nd edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity, one of the largest documentary festivals in the world.

The event running from this Friday until May 18 (and online from May 20-June 2) will welcome Oscar winners Asif Kapadia and Alex Gibney, Oscar nominees David France, Rémi Grellety, and Guy Davidi, and fellow award-winning filmmakers Lauren Greenfield, Mark Cousins, Andres Veiel, Alexis Bloom, Chester Algernal Gordon, Mads Brügger, Zackary Drucker, Brandon Kramer, Rachel Elizabeth Seed, among many others.

The festival, which runs simultaneously in seven cities including Warsaw, Łódź, and Gdynia, will showcase almost 180 films from around the world, a number of which are very likely to wind up in the next Oscar race.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” says artistic director Karol Piekarczyk. “These films are absolutely incredible, and I can’t wait for people to see them.

Norwegian director Monica Strømdahl spent years traveling across the United States, documenting life in cheap hotels also known as flophouses. Then in 2017, she met 11-year-old Mikal in a hotel lobby. Strømdahl had met many children in flophouses, but Mikal was the only child whom she had met born into the situation. Eventually, after building a mutual trust, Mikal and his parents agreed to let Strømdahl film them in their home, where the bathroom doubled as a kitchen, for three years.

The result is “Flophouse America,” a documentary about Mikal, his parents, and the small home that they share. Amid addiction and chaos is a surprising amount of love and hope. The doc examines Mikal’s heartbreaking situation, which is more common in the U.S. than many people may think.

Statistics read by Mikal at the beginning of the doc make that clear. “The official poverty rate in the U.

“Who spilled vodka on the cat?” are words that, to my knowledge, have never been spoken in a movie before. Until now.

They are uttered by 12-year-old Mikal in the documentary Flophouse America, which just made its world premiere at Cph:dox in Copenhagen, winning a Special Mention in the Dox:Award category. Mikal was expressing not only concern for his cat Smoky, but frustration with his parents – the likely culprits behind the inadvertent moistening of the feline.

In the directorial debut of Norwegian photographer Monica Strømdahl, the captivating young Mikal spends a lot of his time as the responsible one in the household – regularly washing dishes in the bathtub, for instance, or tending to Smoky’s needs – while his parents occupy themselves drinking and smoking. Though not yet a teenager, in many respects it’s he who takes on the parental role.

“He had this fire inside, he had this strength,...

Director Monica Strømdahl’s “Flophouse America” provides a visceral documentation of poverty in America. Flophouses are cheap, run-down motels where many people are forced to live when they cannot afford better housing. For her feature documentary debut, Strømdahl spent many years touring such places in America and taking photos of their inhabitants. Then she met Mikal, whose story she tells in “Flophouse America,” and decided stills were not enough. Since he was underage while the footage was being shot, the filmmakers waited for him to become an adult to get his consent to share his story.

The director’s insistence on no-frills digital photography adds to the grittiness of the images, rendering them profoundly real. As the film opens, a matter-of-fact, unemotional voice shares statistics about children living with poverty, parental abuse and alcoholism in the United States, as the numbers flash in simple white text on a black screen.

Cph:dox has crowned winners at the latest edition of the renowned nonfiction film festival in Copenhagen.

The Dox:Award, the festival’s top prize, went to Always, the directorial debut of Deming Chen. The film tells the story of a young poet, 8-year-old Youbin, who lives “deep in the lush mountains of Hunan province” in southern China.

“There’s a huge difference between nothing and small things. But life is in fact made up of many, often unnoticed, small things. We need the sensibilities of artists to show us the greatness of the little things,” noted the Dox:Award jury comprised of Rikke Tambo Andersen, Max Kestner, Nicolas Rapold, Adele Tulli and Raul Niño Zambrano. “This exquisitely shot chronicle of a rural farming family is alive with compassion and poetry.”

The ‘Always’ filmmaking team celebrates their Dox:Award win at Cph:dox

The Dox:Award, sponsored by Politiken and Politiken-Fonden, comes with a €10,000 prize.

Mikal...

On Friday, the top Dox award at Copenhagen documentary festival Cph:dox went to “Always,” the first feature by Chinese director Deming Chen. The film follows eight-year-old Youbin, raised by his father and grandparents in a remote mountain village in Hunan province, who discovers poetry as a means of making sense of his solitude and the world around him.

Shot in stunning black and white, the film blends lyrical beauty with raw realism, following Youbin’s coming-of-age as he grapples with life, loss, and the passage of time.

Taking to the stage, a very emotional Chen thanked his entire team. Producer Hansen Lin said: “Through the journey of making this film, we hope to share this happiness and achievement with everyone who still believes in their dreams. If you believe in it, you will make it – even if life may sometimes disappoint you. We always hold onto the hope that peace...

Sales agency Lightdox has boarded Monica Strømdahl’s “Flophouse America,” which has its world premiere on Wednesday in the main competition section of Copenhagen’s documentary festival Cph:dox.

The film follows 12-year-old Mikal, who shares a small room in a cheap hotel, commonly known as a flophouse, with his parents and their cat, Smokey. Their home is marked by chaos and alcohol abuse, but also by love and the hope for a better future.

Strømdahl spent years traveling across the U.S., documenting life in these hotels. Eight years ago, she met Mikal, one of many children growing up in this environment. This coming-of-age documentary follows him over three years, capturing the pain of a fractured childhood alongside the warmth and complexity of his family.

Lightdox’s Anna Berthollet said: “This extraordinary film unveils the raw and heartbreaking reality of a young boy’s fight for hope amidst the chaos of poverty and addiction.

Europe has rolled out the red carpet for American buyers. Thanks to European Film Promotion’s Europe! On Demand initiative, co-organized with Copenhagen documentary festival Cph:dox, U.S. distributors and other buyers are being offered access to seven European documentaries playing at the festival and available for North America.

On March 12, a dozen U.S. buyers from top outfits including Neon, Mubi, Netflix, Sony Pictures Classics and Kino Lorber were invited to an online pitching session with the films’ respective artistic, production and sales teams. The U.S.-European bridging event will continue on-site with an in-person networking event during the festival’s industry sidebar, Cph:forum (March 24-27).

Five of the documentaries are world premiering in the festival’s most prestigious Dox:award section. Handled internationally by Universal Pictures Content Group, “Á demain sur la lune” (“See You Tomorrow on the Moon”) is directed by the multi-awarded Thomas Balmès. Under the Rise & Shine banner,...

The Romantic-Comedy genre has served cheeseballs to audiences who have often flocked to them for a pat on the back for years. It has not only provided the audience with the much-needed hope that love is around the corner but has also entertained them with neatly packed humor that makes a dolly out of life’s most lovable moments. However, with changing times, the genre has undergone a makeover of sorts. More films have established the idea of a rom-com but have twisted the narrative to serve the greater good. Subverting the genre has thus become a common trait. Indie films of late have often done wonders within the genre itself. The best romantic comedy movies of the decade have thus come out from the indie cinema. 24 of those are as follows:

24. Two Night Stand (2014) | Director: Max Nichols

“Two Night Stand” revolves around Megan (Analeigh Tipton) and Alec (Miles Teller...

A summer night in Brooklyn, N.Y., and a fine one. You can actually sit on your kitchen chair, instead of the stoop, and feel the breeze off Upper New York Bay. The streets of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant district are quiet as Chris Rock’s boxy black Range Rover breathes hoarsely through them.

It’s about 10 p.m. as Rock pulls over on a dimly lit, nearly deserted block of Decatur Street, a few yards from the house he grew up in, and steps out to summon a boyhood friend.