On Thursday evening, following the annual documentary seminar at the Danish Film Institute, DOKDAG 2021, director Camilla Nielsson received the Roos award, which acknowledges an extraordinary contribution to Danish documentary film.
The selection committee (Head of the Danish Film institute Claus Ladegaard, Head of the Documentary Unit Ane Mandrup, and last year’s recipient KG Film’s post production guru Anders V. Christensen) gave the following motivation:
“At a time when democracy is being challenged in several Western countries and our neighbours on the other side of the Baltic Sea are curtailing independent courts, Camilla Nielsson's film reminds us that democracy is a fragile entity that is extraordinarily difficult to build. Political rulers do not readily relinquish power, and Zimbabwe's recent political history is the narrative of a sham democracy and the consequences when institutions are not free and independent.
Camilla Nielsson’s method is the NOW, the observing now, where the audience experiences what she experiences behind the camera. She insists on being present when the action unfolds over several years, closely following the task of writing a new constitution in ‘Democrats’, or uninterrupted for several months as during filming of the presidential election in Zimbabwe in ‘President’.
At the same time, she has a completely unique ability to capture the intense drama in political negotiations, in the polite exchanges and administrative processes, which helps to make her film fundamentally thrilling from start to finish.
Camilla Nielsson invests all of her cinematic talent and all of herself to give audiences access to Zimbabwe's political reality as it unfolds for the people, far from the Western press and election observers.
Camilla Nielsson is uncompromising and fearless - both during filming, when she risks everything to capture systematic repression, and after filming, when she sues Robert Mugabe, who banned her film in Zimbabwe.
With 'Democrats' and 'President', Camilla Nielsson writes history. She writes Zimbabwe's recent political history, she writes film history with her unique approach and her epic observant political thriller method, and she writes the history of democracy, thereby making it relevant to anyone who either longs for democracy or takes democracy for granted - and this is why she receives this year's Roos Award. “
Of course we at FCFR wholeheartedly agree with the selection committee’s decision and motivation, and congratulate Camilla with the award - it is extremely well deserved!
Previous recipients of the Roos Award includes Signe Byrge Sørensen, producer at Final Cut for Real, Janus Billeskov Jansen, editor and head of the board of Final Cut for Real, and frequent FCFR collaborators Jon Bang Carlsen, Niels Pagh Andersen, Lars Skree, Henrik Bohn Ipsen and Anders V. Christensen.
Click here to read more about the award in this article from the Danish Film Institute (in Danish)