Inside CPH:DOX 2026
Modern Times Review heads to Copenhagen for world premieres, debates & a wider map of nonfiction cinema
As CPH:DOX 2026 opens today and runs through 22 March, Modern Times Review heads back to Copenhagen for one of the key annual meeting points between nonfiction cinema and industry exchange. This year, our coverage will follow the festival across both the public programme and the professional ecosystem, with a particular focus on the DOX:AWARD world premieres, all of which we’ll be reviewing in the days ahead. We will also be on site during the CPH:INDUSTRY days, as the festival’s industry strand gathers filmmakers, producers, funders, and decision-makers from across the field between March 15 and 20.
Alongside our editorial presence, Modern Times Review is also part of Ekko’s international panel of critics for the CPH:DOX 2026 critics grid. Elsewhere, the festival’s wider industry context includes the return of EUROPE! Docs, the EFP and CPH:DOX showcase, highlighting six DOX:AWARD world premieres for the North American market.
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News
CPH:DOX unveils full 2026 programme, citing 86 world premieres
CPH:DOX announces full programme of 2026 CPH:INDUSTRY activities
CPH:DOX unveils 2026 competition lineup, adds new FIPRESCI prize
CPH:DOX expands immersive non-fiction ambitions with INTER:ACTIVE 2026 programme
Interview
CPH:DOX INTER:ACTIVE 2026: Hypervigilance politics
Mark Atkin discusses CPH:DOX INTER:ACTIVE 2026, the «hypervigilance» theme, embodied storytelling, and the distribution barrier facing immersive art.
«No audience is braver than people who come to documentaries»
CPH:DOX Head of Programme Niklas Engstrøm speaks to Modern Times Review about the 2026 festival, democratic dialogue, film curation, and documentary form.
Films
A Little Gray Wolf Will Come
Director: Zhanna Agalakova
Identity politics form the foundation of former high-flying Russian public television correspondent Zhanna Agalakova’s debut documentary.
Amílcar
Director: Miguel Eek
Built from original letters, poems, and political writings, Amílcar offers a subjective, meditative portrait of Amílcar Cabral and the fight for Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde’s independence.
Better Go Mad in the Wild
Director: Miro Remo
Rural twin brothers resisting modern life, where imagination, memory, and rebellion shape a fading yet vivid freedom.
Cinema Kawakeb
Director: Mahmoud Al Massad
Inside a crumbling theatre in Amman, refugees guard reels and memories while century-spanning archives map the road from declarations to today’s Palestine.
Climate in Therapy
Director: Nathan Grossman
A Gestalt-inspired session lets climate scientists grieve, rage, and exhale, revealing systemic neglect and surprising ‘Safe Spaces’ outcome.
Ghost Elephants
Director: Werner Herzog
With Ghost Elephants, Werner Herzog creates another work within his transgressive anthropology.
Nova ‘78
Director: Rodrigo Areias, Aaron Brookner
An electrified archive of 1978’s Nova Convention with Burroughs, Ginsberg, Cage, Smith colliding in a space where theory met punk poetry on 16mm.
The Encampments
Director: Michael T. Workman, Kei Pritsker
From Chicago 7 to Columbia, The Encampments shows how protest is reframed as threat, as language like terrorist and «anti Semite» is used to silence dissent.
Traces
Director: Alisa Kovalenko, Marysia Nikitiuk
Winner of the Panorama Audience Award at this year’s Berlinale, Traces, details the powerful story of women seeking to survive and thrive after being raped and tortured by Russian forces during the war in Ukraine.