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Discover the award-winning films of the 2023 Copenhagen Film Festival nomination categories and learn more about all the inspiring filmmakers we featured this year.
Best Animated Film Winner
Going Well..
The deadline is approaching. Producer Park, who is in charge of closing, comes to the writer. The writer escapes to delusions and goes crazy due to the PD's pressure and stress of the deadline. JURY STATEMENT: In the film that has been awarded in the category of Best Animated Film, we are introduced to a writer who is tormented by the looming deadline to deliver her writing. What sets this film apart is the clever use of timing and animation style to effectively convey the intense stress and anxiety experienced by the protagonist. As viewers, we are not mere observers but are immersed in her world, feeling every ounce of pressure that she encounters. Therefore, it is with pleasure that we announce that the award for the Best Animated Film goes to ‘Going Well..’, directed by HyeJeong Lee from South Korea. This film's use of animation to support the story, captivating the audience and making us personally experience the stress portrayed, is praiseworthy. Congratulations to the director and the entire team behind ‘Going Well..’.
HyeJeong Lee
Best Comedy Winner
Spag Bol
Following a double homicide, two crime scene cleaners find themselves entangled in an unlikely romance. Who said romance is dead.
BRICK
Best Danish Film Winner
Neurolink
In a near future, we meet Frida (22), who undergoes a brain implant – a Neurolink. The chip communicates with her in the form of a voice inside her head, helping her towards a happier life. For a while, she lives without worries as she unquestioningly follows the voice's advice. However, the voice begins to take more and more control. Eventually, the Neurolink app takes over Frida, and she no longer recognizes herself. In an attempt to regain control, Frida deletes the app. It turns out, however, not to be so easy. After a brief feeling of freedom, the voice returns, leading to a battle to permanently delete the chip.
Jens-Julius Grunderlund Dall
Best Drama Winner
The Taster
The Danube Delta, Romania. Near future. The young Romanian Ozana is chosen to work as the new taster girl for the occupying forces. But already on her first day of work she breaks the most important rule – never look the leader in the eye. Soon Ozana finds herself face to face with the unpredictable man who is occupying her country. All alone.
Sophia Bierend
Best Experimental Winner
Movers
Movers' is an exploration into the storytelling through movement: Five people were given prompts asking about specific, significant memories from their past. They were they asked to translate the experiences into movement. [Shot on Alexa Mini – Printed onto 16mm Film]
alec goldberg
Best Feature Documentary Winner
The Honey Movie
A man’s journey to show the true value of honey and its purpose for humanity. The film follows the hero for 30 days, thru 6 different countries, eating only honey for the entire duration of filming. It explores how different cultures relate to this product, how they cultivate it and dispels the myth that honey and sugar are the same. From the tribes of Ethiopia, to the modern European techniques, the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, and the jungles of Java – the film unravels how much work a jar of honey really contains, the importance of bees, and how miraculous this product really is.
Sasha Nikitin
Best Feature Film Winner
Paula
At only fourteen years old, Paula hates her body. In an attempt to express what she feels, Paula creates a blog and becomes part of a large virtual community that shares her problems. Shelter in anonymity, she uploads content recorded with her cell phone, exposing her friends and family. The feeling of belonging blinds Paula, who begins to walk a lonely path in which bulimia and anorexia lurk as alternatives in the search for self-acceptance.
Florencia Wehbe
Best Music Video Winner
My Body Is My Temple
The Dad Bods bring their big fitness unit to this hard-hitting music video, as they gracefully interpret the Testosterone-infused power ballad from Spandex the Musical.
Elizabeth Piccoli
Best Short Documentary Winner
A Small Circle
The first 3 months of pregnancy are usually best kept secret. In these uncertain months anything can happen. But what if something happens? What if an early miscarriage brings the pregnancy that has just started to a sudden end? A Small Circle is a visual diary of the beginning and the end of a first pregnancy. JURY STATEMENT: An intimate story about one of the decisive moments in life. With a minimalistic visual style and precise narration we are brought into the mind of a young woman – the filmmaker – and her thoughts about a potential pregnancy. It conveys complex emotions in a very touching and beautiful way.
Sofia Ose
Best Short Film Winner
Killing Ourselves
Maya takes her parents and sister to the desert in order to film them for an additional scene in her film. But the day of filming turns into a never-ending family argument, and it becomes unclear whether they will even manage to cooperate and become a team. JURY STATEMENT: A minimalistic and understated drama in a desert that effortlessly merges everyday realism, stylized absurdism, comedy, and a strongly self-reflexive form into a warm and subtle story about a family and a daughter’s attempt to make a film about them.
Maya Yadlin
Best Student Film Winner
The Beast Within Me Is A Child
Do we ever become adults? If so, when? Regardless of where we are in life, the question seems to remain unanswerable. We improvise and take risks, and yet we never seem to reach a goal. Even with the work we put in to meet expectations, especially our own, that gnawing feeling of inadequacy persists. Perhaps we never lose our inner child, but rather become blind to its whims, both good and bad. Maybe growing up is about befriending and reconciling with that child, rather than searching to control it. Could it be that the inner child we all have is what binds us all together?
Mai Alneng