Dongnan Chen’s Whispers In May won the top €10,000 cash prize at this year’s Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) in a ceremony held Friday (March 20) at the Social Cinema in Kunsthal Charlottenborg.
Whispers In May blends documentary and fiction to create a coming-of-age story about three girls living in a remote village in the Liangshan Mountains, in the south of China’s Sichuan province.
“Walking over the edge of the last days of childhood, this director has succeeded in sharing a modern-day fairytale that heeds monsters and factories alike,” said the DOX:AWARD jury. The prize is sponsored by Politiken Fonden.
It marks the filmmaker’s second feature-length film, whose previous work includes the short film 14 Paintings (2023), which showed in Sundance and IDFA, and the 2021 feature documentary Singing In The Wilderness, which screened at Thessaloniki and Rotterdam festivals, among others.
Scroll down for the full list of winners
There was also a special mention in the category for French filmmaker Nolwenn Herve’s debut doc feature The Cord detailing one woman’s fight to support mothers in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The jury cited Herve as “one to watch”.
The festival’s Next:Wave award, which focuses on emerging filmmakers was won by Irene Bartholomé’s Dream Of Another Summer.
“The city of Beirut is the epicentre of this meditative journey, but the film transcends the local and becomes an existential reflection on the fragility of the human condition,” said the Next:Wave jury.
A special mention went to Tom Adjibi’s This Is Not a French Film, which is a docu-satire about a Belgian-Beninese director’s struggles to make his debut film. This film highlights the complexity of identity and representation in a completely disarming and humorous manner, as a courageously clumsy filmmaker gathers a collective of friends and colleagues in an effort to confront their experience of racialisation within the Belgian film industry.
CPH:DOX had six juried competition sections: Dox:Award, New Vision, Next Wave, Nordic Dox, F: Act and Human Rights.
The inaugural Fipresci prize was awarded to Nathan Grossman’s Amazomania. The film reframes documentary footage of a 1996 expedition to the isolated Korubo community in Brazil with a fresh trip in 2023, raising questions of western invasions into the community’s culture and way of life.
The international competition lineup included a total of 74 films, featured 53 world premieres, 17 international premieres and four European premieres.
The festival closed on March 22.
CPH: DOX 2026 winners
DOX: Award
Whispers In May (HK- Neth- S Korea-Swe)
Dir: Dongnan Chen
Prod: Jia Zhao
F:Act Award
Just Look Up (US-Den)
Dirs: Emma Wall, Betsy Hershey
Prods: Signe Byrge Sørensen, Natja Rosner
Human Rights Award
American Doctor * (US-Pal- Mal-Den)
Dir. Poh Si Teng
Prods: Kirstine Barfod, Poh Si Teng, Reem Haddad, Simon Kilmurry, Hamza Ali, Mohammed Sawwaf
The Phantom Pain of Rojava (Swe-Nor)
Dir: Maryam Embrahimi
Prods: Stina Gardell, Kristine Ann Skaret
Nordic:Dox Award
The Secret Reading Club Of Kabul (Fin-Nor)
Dirs: Shakiba Adil, Elina Hirvonen
Prods: Marko Talli, Johanna Raita
Next:Wave
Dream Of Another Summer (Sp-Leb)
Dir. Irene Bartolomé
Prods: Pere Marzo, Elie Kamal, Irene Bartolomé
New:Vision
Compact Disc (HK-UK)
Dir: Rico Wong
Prods: Hau Chun Chan, Jessie Yang
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