“Come for those flashy projects and stay for the slow burns,” says Mara Gourd-Mercardo, head of industry and training at Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH: Dox).
She is talking to the international industry execs heading to the festival on the hunt for the best in upcoming feature doc projects.
Some 200 financiers and industry representatives confirmed to attend are streaming executives from Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and HBO Europe; broadcasters Arte, ZDF, VPRO, BBC, France Télévisions, National Geographic, POV, NHK, Al Jazeera, and Rai.
Gourd-Mercardo is particularly looking forward to the second edition of CPH: Roughcut, which will present five non-fiction projects at post-production or rough-cut stage, with at least 80% of material already shot
“It’s for projects that are ready to hit the market, that are looking for that festival premiere, that distribution deal, theatrical release,” says Gourd-Mercardo of the value of the innovation she introduced last year.
Irish director Gar O’Rourke is presenting Siege Of Paradise. This Ireland-Switzerland co-production portrays the pressures faced by the locals of the picturesque villages of the Cinque Terre on Italy’s northern Riviera, due to over-tourism. O’Rourke’s Ukraine-set Sanatorium had its world premiere at last year’s CPH:Dox.
Also being showcased is Moroccan director Asmae El Moudir’s hybrid documentary Don’t Let the Sun Go Up on Me, which blends family archive with location filming in portraying the story of Fatimazahra, a young woman born with a rare genetic disorder that renders exposure to the sun fatal. The filmmaker is a regular CPH: Dox attendee and will be in town.
Gourd-Mercardo is proud of what the industry programme has achieved. She points to Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazic’s To Hold A Mountain, winner of the year’s Sundance World Cinema Documentary grand prize, which was in the inaugural Roughcut section last year. The film about a tiny isolated community in Montenegro taking a stand against those who would seek to destroy their way of life is now screening in the festival part of CPH:Dox.
“Our opening film, Marinka, was a pitch at CPH: DOX, Dongnan Chen’s Whispers in May, Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment. That’s a measure of success for us to see what’s coming back,” says Gourd-Mercardo.
CPH: Roughcut takes place during CPH: Industry week as part of the festival’s international financing and co-production platform, CPH: Forum from March 16-19, 2026.
Themes
There are occurring themes running through this year’s projects, says Gourd-Mercardo. She points to the many works that are examining the past to talk about the present and the personal stories that reflect the wider mood of the world.
Examples of the latter include Polish director Łukasz Kowalski’s My Father, the Iceman, which details the story of a daughter who lives in the shadow of her father’s assassination of an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa, while Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia’s Joud details the life and loves of a German-Palestinian-Syrian journalist about to celebrate his 40th birthday. Forced to live across Berlin, Beirut and Damascus, the film follows his negotiation of a life in which legal recognition, family history, and romance are divided by borders.
Joud marks the return to hands-on filmmaking from Nyrabia, the former artistic director of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
Fresh eyes
Gourd-Mercardo and her team received around 900 project submissions, selecting 30 projects for Forum and five for Roughcut. She believes the festival is more relevant to the sector than ever.
“Documentary is getting harder and harder to be independent and to finance. The industry and the filmmakers are turning towards spaces like ours to find new collaborations, co-productions, to find new ways, new pathways, into financing their projects,” says Gourd-Mercardo.
She gives details of the work the festival does with philanthropic organisations from around the world. As an example, she mentions the Gates Foundation, which has long attended CPH: Forum.
“We’ve had a very long conversation that started many years ago with the Gates Foundation. They might not have a pot of money specifically for film, but they might be able to help out in promotion and distribution in other ways that is as important as financing the production of the film.”
This year’s CPH: Forum programme also boasts CPH: Change, highlighting projects from the Eastern Partnership countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.
CPH: Lab, the talent development programme for immersive non-fiction, Intro: Dox, for emerging filmmakers and the CPH: Market online platform, which runs from March 11 to April 2.
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