100 years ago Davos, with its high-quality Alpine microclimate, was an exclusive destination for people suffering from respiratory problems. But for the last 50 years the little ski resort in Switzerland has hosted the annual World Economic Forum. These three days in January are enough to make Davos today a synonym around the world for the most concentrated gathering of power and money. DAVOS is a portrait of the inhabitants and their home town, which may be indelibly marked by globalization yet emerges as very different from what one might expect. An interview with Daniel Hoesl and co-director Julia Niemann.

In Denmark the restrictions imposed to combat the coronavirus went into effect on March 12. This meant the end for the 17th CPH:DOX Festival in its usual form. However, just six days later the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival kicked off in a digital space including all the competitive sections and the professional platforms such as CPH:Forum or CPH:Lab. We talked to festival director Tine Fischer about team spirit, a decision without any alternatives and virtual solutions in times of a real crisis.

Motivated by their very differing personal relationships to the topos of forests, three women from three countries – the filmmakers and producers Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan, Ebba Sinzinger and Michaela Kirst – came together to join undercover activists on an investigative adventure lasting many years. WOOD, filmed openly in some parts and with a hidden camera in others, shows in snapshots the brutal business of illegal logging, clearly indicating the worldwide dimension of this issue.

A beautiful house. Countryside all around. A father lives alone here with his 10-year-old daughter. That's what it looks like at first sight. The girl, who swims, speaks and laughs, is an android machine programmed to keep alive the presence of a girl who was lost – while also satisfying the desires of its owner and relieving his loneliness. At some point she vanishes but continues to function in her own way. Sandra Wollner’s THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN does not move along narrative lines but penetrates uncomfortable mental spaces, raising difficult questions in the zones of encounter between artificial intelligence and human perception.

If Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel don't travel for their film project, they plunge beneath the surface of their city. A fascination with the underlying melancholic aspects of Vienna songs leads them to one of its most outstanding interpreters. Kurt Girk’s intriguing account of his life is interwoven in NOTES FROM THE UNDERWORLD with the city's gangster milieu of the late 1960s in the shape of its legendary protagonist Alois Schmutzer; the two men are bound by a lifelong friendship as well as a serious, harrowing travesty of justice.

Claudia was just 11 when the interest of filmmaker Lisa Weber was drawn to this cool teenager. She became pregnant at 14, and when she was 18 the young mother wanted to join the Austrian Army. This was also the moment when Lisa Weber began to follow her around with a camera. What started out as the story of a modern, everyday heroine developed into a long-term study of day-by-day stagnation. In RUNNING ON EMPTY Lisa Weber has ventured into a narrative nadir and captured with unfailing patience the petering out of existential driving force.

«…only an idealist treats his audience with as much respect as he does here. And only an idealist invites his audience to look at the world as closely and deeply as he does as he reminds us that it is only by seeing — really seeing — the world as it exists, that we stand any chance at all of saving it», wrote Manohla Dargis in her NYT review of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s striking essay EARTH. Read more