CPH:DOX 2025
Kunsthal Charlottenborg will once again transform into the headquarter of Copenhagen's international documentary film festival CPH:DOX 19 – 30 March 2025. During the festival, you can attend the exhibition opening and the grand DOX-party at Charlottenborg, meet Ai Weiwei, and experience VR-art as well as a multitude of film screenings, talks, debates and concerts.
When CPH:DOX opens up in March, Danish and international guests can look forward to a unique experience at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. During the festival, Charlottenborg will function as an international festival center with exhibitions, film screenings and other activities. Everyone is welcome to visit CPH:DOX at Kunsthal Charlottenborg during the entire festival period 19 – 30 March 2025.
PROGRAM AT KUNSTHAL CHARLOTTENBORG
CPH:DOX Party
The annual opening party is marked by CPH:DOX’s Youth Editorial Board, which for the first time presents the big party under the theme DISRUPTION, with a live concert by ZOUMER.
How do we find hope, love, and care – for ourselves and others – in a world marked by challenges and injustice? This evening, we will explore how electronic music can be both a strong act of resistance and a source of solicitude. Music creates community, strength and solidarity in uncertain times. Read more here
Human:Rights
Since 2017, Kunsthal Charlottenborg has served as the headquarters of the international film festival CPH:DOX. The two institutions are this year entering af new collaborating, in which they through films, debates, art and education, want to show the audience that human rights and the conversation about it remain crucial.
Over the next three years, CPH:DOX and Kunsthal Charlottenborg—together with partners such as Human Rights Watch Denmark and with support from the newly established Frececo Foundation—will focus on human rights through the new initiative HUMAN:RIGHTS. This initiative includes exhibitions, thematic film programmes, talks and debates, as well as educational programs for school classes—an agenda that seems more important than ever. Read more here
Join the opening of two new exhibtions
On the occasion of CPH:DOX, look forward to experiencing the exhibitions BEING SAFE IS SCARY by Istanbul-based visual artist Banu Cennetoğlu and Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage).
Banu Cennetoğlu is interested in how the production and distribution of text- and image-based information contributes to shape our world. The exhibition BEING SAFE IS SCARY intertwines personal and collective stories in a shared political space, moving from societal issues to the more intimate sphere. Critical investigations of the daily press, European migration flows and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights are brought into dialogue with an extensive private image archive, connecting everyday events, both small and large, to urgent global issues. Read more here
Disobedience Archive explores the relationship between art and political action by examining how resistance struggles are translated into moving images, thereby creating a form of artistic visual activism.
The archive consists of a comprehensive and continuously growing collection of films that depict nearly fifty years of social struggles across different parts of the world. By establishing connections between otherwise separated justice struggles, the archive enables viewers to see them in a broader political context across time and geography. Disobedience Archive is curated by Marco Scotini and has been presented at institutions worldwide since 2005, most recently at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Read more here
The opening of the exhibitions takes place on Thursday 20 March at 16.00-20.00 with free admission. A free ticket to the talk can be booked here.
Conversation with Ai Weiwei about art and human rights
Ai Weiwei, one of the world’s most influential contemporary artists and activists, is renowned for using his art to challenge censorship and advocate for human rights. At CPH:DOX 2025, he will join us for an in-depth conversation on how his artistic practice and activism intersect in the fight for freedom of expression and against political oppression. Read more here
INTER:ACTIVE
Experience this year’s INTER:ACTIVE exhibition Untamed: Humanity Rewilded, at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. The exhibition encourages ecological reconciliation and cultural transformation in light of the environmental crisis and social oppression. Curated by CPH:LAB’s Head of Studies, Mark Atkin, Untamed: Humanity Rewilded confronts the entrenched patterns of anthropocentric thinking and the historical exploitation of nature through a series of powerful works. The exhibition is shaped by the concept of ‘solastalgia’—a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the emotional toll of environmental degradation and social alienation. Read more here
TERROIR x Sarah Fredelund
To CPH:DOX 2025 at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the architects TERROIR x Sarah Fredelund have collaborated to create a unique interior design, where the themes Behind the Headline, The Collage and The Read Thread unfold the festival’s spatial dimension.
This architectural approach creates a dynamic and immersive festival setting, where visitors can move between film, dialogue and reflection. Each space has its own identity, with sculptural elements that support the festival’s central functions: The Meeting, Companionship and The Pause.
Opening hours and admission during CPH:DOX
Kunsthal Charlottenborg will be closed 10 – 18 March during the preparations of CPH:DOX. During the festival, which will take place 19 – 30 March, Kunsthal Charlottenborg will be open every day, Monday-Sunday from 10.00 in the morning until late – there is free admission to the exhibition with Banu Cennetoğlu and Disobedience Archive (The Open Storage), which is open every day until 20.00.
For the INTER:ACTIVE program as well as most film screenings and events related to CPH:DOX will, however, require the purchase of a ticket or the payment of an entrance fee.