The Last Men in Aleppo Wins At 14th CPH:DOX Festival

During a ceremony held at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen on Friday, awards were presented to some of the world’s finest film makers at the 14th CPH:DOX documentary film festival. The winners are as follows:

DOX:AWARD. The Last Men in Aleppo by Feras Fayyad, co-directed by Steen Johannessen.

The main Competition DOX:AWARD brings together the best international documentaries. The Last Men in Aleppo is a portrait of three reluctant heroes working to save the civilians of Aleppo in the middle of a war zone.

The jury said that its “devastating emotional immediacy plunges us into a Shakespearean tragedy of a people striving to retain their humanity in the face of impossible realities.”

F:ACT AWARD. Radio Kobanï by Reber Dosky.

The F:ACT Award is presented to films that have the power to change the world we live in. Radio Kobanï follows a 21-year-old woman’s struggle for her local radio station in the war-torn city of Kobanï.

The jury said: “We have chosen a beautifully crafted film – a film about life and death, war and peace, the loss of hope in humanity and the regaining of that hope. The film is a fiercely intimate piece as well as a rigorously researched piece of citizen journalism.”

NORDIC:DOX AWARD. Land of the Free by Camilla Magid.

The NORDIC:DOX Award is presented to the best and brightest in cinema from the Nordic countries. Land of the Free depicts the harsh social reality of a neighbourhood in South Central, Los Angeles.

The jury “was deeply moved by a film that takes us into the depths of human vulnerability. Its well-chosen and poignant stories forcefully mirror each other. The film achieves an incredible intimacy with its protagonists and stays true to its cinematic choices.”

NEW:VISION AWARD. Life Imitation by Zhou Chen.

The NEW:VISION Award is dedicated to films in the field between documentary and visual art. Life Imitation is a dark and futuristic dream of a film from a virtual reality, where scenes from China’s underground merge with pixelated shoot-outs.

The jury said: “Without spectacle and with deep ambivalence, the film creates an intimate portrait of the performance of the self in a hypermediated world, calmly casting an insistent gaze on shifting experiences of sociality, gender, and technology.”

NEXT:WAVE AWARD. 1996 Lucy and the Corpses in the Pool by Marcos Migliavacca & Nahuel Lahora.

The Next:Wave Award is given to emerging filmmakers with the courage to take chances. 1996 Lucy and the Corpses in the Pool is an Argentine lo-fi hybrid recorded on VHS about a woman’s weekend trip to a music festival at a friend’s house.

The jury said that is was “a playful film that combines different layers of recent history while challenging our assumptions of time/space, memory and nostalgia.”

POLITIKENS AUDIENCE AWARD. City of Ghosts by Matthew Heineman.

During the festival, the audience had the opportunity to vote for their favourite of ten films selected by CPH:DOX, in collaboration with Politiken, which celebrate artistic freedom. City of Ghosts follows a group of civilian journalists from Syria reporting from the city of Raqqa, which is under ISIS control.