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Discover the award-winning films of the 1st Copenhagen Film Festival nomination categories and learn more about all the inspiring filmmakers we featured this year.
Best Animation Winner
The World of Microfluidics: Microfluidics and Microbioreactor
This film is part of a triology made for the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen (DTU) within the frame of two scientific research programs founded by the European Commission aiming to provide an insight into the field of microfluidics for people outside of the scientific community. The film explains the core principles of microfluidics through a personification of its main components: enzymes and substrates as comic characters in a soccer like game. Microfluidics can be the basis for solving problems like having better rechargeable batteries, cleaner drinkable water, replacements for oil or can even lead to some improvements in the medical field to fight cancer more effectively.
Toby Mory, Nico Roicke
Best Comedy Winner
What Jacques saw (Jacques a vu)
In their momentum for a neo-rural life in the Belgian Ardennes countryside, Brice and Lara soon have to face the imminent construction of a holiday resort nearby. A true race against time then starts for the young couple and revolves around Brice’s quirky cousin Jacques, a native from the village, prone to mystical visions that will eventually lead them all to the Vatican! First feature-lentgh try for the director, this provincial burlesque comedy, both tender and grotesque, depicts the Chapon-Laroche village microcosme and especially our endearing trio, which will inexorably undergo a series of surprising metamorphoses.
Xavier Diskeuve
Best Comedy (Short) Winner
Help Im trapped in a movie
A man wakes up to find himself the star of a Hollywood blockbuster, but his dream soon becomes a nightmare when he discovers he can't control the plot.
Riley Madincea
Best Director Winner
Johnny Walker
A washed up Hollywood director is trapped in a remote castle by his own fears until the arrival of a mysterious woman offers him possible salvation. Inspired by Dostoevsky's 'Notes from the Underground', Johnny Walker attempts to answer the burning question: Is living a long life vulgar, immoral or just plain bad manners?
Kris De Meester
Best Director (Student) Winner
The Door To the Sun
The night inflects in growth and the days clean your face. You step through a door to the sunlight. There, not in the light of yours, you are leading the body, streaming with blood. There, you are a human being now, and you walk to find your time. – Michael Strunge, Danish poet. 2016
Julie Annlie
Best Documentary (Student) Winner
Picking Up the Pieces
The film explores the perspectives of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors as they rebuilt their lives after the Second World War. Answering the question, “How do you “live” after surviving the Holocaust?” the film builds a nuanced and complex portrait of the survivors’ struggles through the lens of key universal questions about Belief in God, Forgiveness, Home, Jewish identity and Memory. Nine survivor’s voices are interwoven together and merge into a choral ensemble telling the previously untold story of the efforts of child survivors to build normal and productive lives from tragic beginnings. Child survivors are now the last living witnesses of the Holocaust. Their struggle, bittersweet reflections, hope and energy are poignant and uplifting testament to the human spirit.
Joshua Tebeau
Best Documentary Director Winner
Munich '72 and Beyond
On September 5, 1972, Palestinian extremists infiltrated the athletes’ dorms at the Munich Summer Olympics to take 11 Israeli athletes hostage and eventually murdered them all before being killed or captured by the German police. Award-winning filmmaker Stephen Crisman revisits that tragic day in chilling detail through new interviews with both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as family members, eyewitnesses, Olympic authorities and government officials. An intensely emotional account of the first act of modern terrorism viewed worldwide as it unfolded, Munich ’72 and Beyond exposes shocking new information about the tragic events and their devastating aftermath, as well as chronicling the four-decade-long struggle to create a public memorial to the victims of the massacre.
Stephen Crisman
Best Drama Winner
The Sinking of Sozopol
One love, ten bottles of vodka and a town, who must go down. An aging man goes back to Sozopol and brings along his memories and ten bottles of vodka. It is clear that when the vodka is over, something must happen. Something that will change his life forever. Because when hope is gone, Miracle is the last resort.
Kostadin Bonev
Best Drama (Short) Winner
Till We Meet Again
Lene hosts a high school reunion to relive her youth and find peace with her destiny. Should she have stayed with her high school sweetheart or made something out of herself?
NIkolaj Storgaard Mortensen
Best Editor Winner
Reborn Lost
The deep cover sleeper cell John Martin is activated to assassinate the man who is turning the tables of power on a corrupt society. But when he realizes he is carrying out a suicide mission he must choose: execute his final order or turn against the world’s most dangerous villain, the man who is pulling the strings from the shadows. Blinded by the pain of betrayal and thirsting for revenge, Martin hunts his omnipotent enemy only to discover he's not the only nemesis he must face…
Jan Hass
Best Experimental Winner
Such Gracious Smiles
Such gracious smiles is an 18-minute sequence shot. The smile distinguishes man from animals. Its execution requires a multitude of muscles that can mean anything and everything: The empathetic, seductive, victorious , mocking, sadistic smile …. A smile to coax, a smile as a weapon of mass destruction but also as a wound in the face. This marks the meeting of an awkward actress, a condescending director, three bossy shrinks who enjoy telling stories that end badly, a lecturer, an assistant with strange manners and a trio of singers on wheels accompanied by a children’s choir. This merry bunch create stories that intertwine and, through di erent narrative paths and performative actions, demonstrate the ambiguity of the smile. All the scenes take place in a single space that is constantly modulated by the changing set design. We watch as the sets shift, as layers are shrugged o liitle by little until the space becomes entirely empty.
Gabriel Desplanque
Best Feature Documentary Winner
BOODY: The Sumo Pharao
BOODY, known by his wrestling name ''Osunaarashi'' (The Great Sand Storm), is the first Sumo wrestler of his kind ever to make it to the professional Sumo world in Japan. He is celebrated for being one of the most noted, strong wrestlers in the top Sumo ranks. The documentary brings out BOODY's journey from ''Al-Bagalt'', the small village in the country side of Egypt where he grew up, all the way to Tokyo right into the one-of-a-kind professional Sumo world.
Sarah Riad
Best Foreign Documentary Winner
FIGHTING TO WIN
The life, struggle and challenges of one the world’s best MMA coach to overcome obstacles and fight for the podium. Andre Pederneiras leads a successful team called Nova União. The lives of his fighters follow similar stories: childhood poverty, abandonment and starvation. Pederneiras is not only a coach but also a father for these men who come from all over the country to fight, win and hopefully change their destinies. The film reveals the determined coach mentoring Jose Aldo, Renan Barão, Eduardo Dantas and other fearless champions confronting arduous physical and mental challenges to become champions.
Leandro Lima
Best Music Score Winner
Born in Heinola
A story of four Finnish boys growing up during the devastating 90's recession. They live in the small, timber industrial town of Heinola. As the parents of these young teens struggle through hard economic times, the four very different guys meet by coincidence to form the punk band Apulanta (fertilizer). Nowadays Apulanta is one of the most famous bands in Finland.
Tuukka Temonen
Best Photograph Winner
Eléctrico Cielo
Best Picture Winner
Johnny Walker
A washed up Hollywood director is trapped in a remote castle by his own fears until the arrival of a mysterious woman offers him possible salvation. Inspired by Dostoevsky's 'Notes from the Underground', Johnny Walker attempts to answer the burning question: Is living a long life vulgar, immoral or just plain bad manners?
Kris De Meester
Best Screenplay Winner
In the Voodoo Parlour of Marie Laveau
Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau faces a grievous threat from an unknown enemy determined to take her position — and her life. To overthrow the mystery rival, she creates the grandest, most arduous ritual journey of her life. But this journey takes unexpected turns to self-discovery, and reveal to Marie Laveau the real nature and the true source of her power.
Best Short Documentary Winner
The Gallerist
Considering the current tech spiral that is being inflicted upon the city of San Francisco, one space Book and Job Gallery, headed by Carson Lancaster represents the former SF; the dark undercurrent, the repellant, erratic, mysterious, elements of San Francisco that are slowly dying. I met Carson 2 years ago in San Francisco on a photo journey for a danish company. I fell in love with his gallery and the insane neighborhood where he lived. I immediately wanted to document it! 2 years after I traveled to USA again to film him and did a piece about his philosophy on life.
jonas normann
Best Trailer Winner
Mood-Trailer WHERE ARE YOU GOING, HABIBI?
This teaser-trailer was made before the actual shooting for the crowdfunding campaign of the movie WHERE ARE YOU GOING, HABIBI? and shows the mood of the film but is stand alone project with different pictures and scenes than in the movie but telling its story in a simple way.
Tor Iben
Humanitarian Award Winner
The Surge
On November 8, 2013, super typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines. Known locally as Yolanda, it claimed over 7,000 lives and left 3,000 missing and millions homeless. While some regions were spared, the aftermath found the Filipino people bewildered and furious at their government's handling of the disaster. This is a story of a people's courage, their cry for justice and their hope for change in one of the world's most corrupt countries.
Wilfred Tangid