Oscar-nominated Danish director Anders Østergaard (Burma VJ) and his producer Lise Lense-Møller (pictured, Magic Hour Films) are bringing cutting edge ideas to documentary filmmaking and distribution with their latest hybrid doc 1989, set to screen in more than 50 European cinemas simultaneously with its world premiere at Copenhagen’s CPH: DOX Festival on November 5.

The creative documentary directed by Østergaard and Hungarian director Erzsebet Racz offers an insight that led to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and subsequently the Berlin Wall. The two central testimonies are the then Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Németh who pulled the political strings by abandoning the Iron Curtain separating his country from the West and Eastern-German Gundula Schafitel, at the time married to the last person killed when trying to cross the border to the West. Other eyewitness accounts are mixed with archive materials and reconstructed scenes and dialogues that are lip-synched with the actual archived footage from the real-life political protagonists.

Lise Lense-Møller says the film is provocative because it pushes boundaries between traditional documentary and drama doc, but the recreated scenes are part of the creative process and actually offer a unique opportunity for audiences to experience the historical events in a more powerful way. At the same time, Østergaard took great care in making sure the historical facts were as accurate as possible. 

An innovative approach is also being applied to the film’s release strategy. To coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, the film will be broadcast around Europe - via the major TV partners including ZDF, ARTE, DR, SVT, NRK, YLE, VPRO, EET, RTS, and CESKA. Four days earlier 1989 will be platformed at DR’s Concert hall as opening film of CPH:DOX. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about Europe today, attended notably by US economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, the former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and Miklos Németh. The discussion will be relayed live to the 50+ participating cinema venues around Europe, from Oslo to London, Porto, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Moscow to Göteborg. 

“Our idea to organize this pan-European simultaneous release came because we had a very small window to release the film in the cinemas before its TV airing on November 9. We had to come up with a different idea and to create an event. At the same time 1989 celebrates a unique moment in European history, so we wanted the film’s release to be a ‘united Europe’ event, where Europeans could see and experience something together”, said Lense-Møller to nordiskfilmogtvfond.com. 

The film received production and distribution support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond.