Art & Culture
Being welcomed in Denmark is a complicated concept. It is for this reason that a well-known French artist living in the Danish capital has organized, for the first time, a film festival featuring only international directors. You can join for free, and the movies will be screened directly in the directors’ homes.
TImagine yourself sitting in a living room, watching a movie with other people. Familiar, right? But what if those people are strangers, the movie is being projected for the first time, and you are in the living room of the director, who is an international? And what if you are joining a film festival where all the movies are about welcoming—inviting you to reflect on what it means to be welcomed in Denmark?
Now, this is how the story begins.
From March 4 to March 17, the Welcome Film Festival will open its doors across Copenhagen, but these doors are not in theaters or cinemas. Instead, they are the private homes of the filmmakers themselves. The festival’s founder, Thierry Geoffroy, also known as Colonel, is a Danish-French conceptual artist who has long experimented with what he calls “format art,” creating participatory, socially engaged events. For this first edition, he turned the spotlight on the city’s international creative community.
The festival brings together a wide range of filmmakers living in Copenhagen. Participants include Alice de Champfleury, Jella Bethmann, Juan Hein, Ada Ortega Camara, Valerie Collart , Thomas Fleurquin, Frank Franzen, George M. Doumani, Maia Hauser, Arturo Fabbro, Rebeka Szalai, and Abel Alazo Rangel. “Some are established names in the art and film scene, others are younger creators in their twenties, just beginning their careers,” explains Geoffroy. All share the experience of being foreigners in Copenhagen, and all will host screenings in their own homes.
The festival is designed around the idea of “intimacy and hospitality. Some screenings will be small, with eight or fifteen guests, while the largest gatherings will accommodate around twenty viewers,” Geoffroy continues. By showing films in private spaces, the festival challenges traditional concepts of cinema and cultural events, removing the layers “of censorship or institutional constraints often present at conventional film festivals”. “Welcome” becomes more than a word or a gesture, it is a practical form of engagement. “Attendees meet the filmmakers, ask questions, and enter the private world where the work was made,” Geoffroy says.
Some films address the idea of being international in Denmark directly. One, for example, focuses on the lives of Roma people in Denmark, offering insight into how minority communities navigate belonging and acceptance. Thomas Fleurquin, a filmmaker who is the co-founder of Copenhagen’s well-known techno festival Distortion and previously wrote for The Copenhagen Post, will also present his film.
Participation is free, without tickets, “because, again, we are talking about something that has to be welcoming”, Geoffroy adds. The exception is a screening by Juan Hein, who charges a small fee to include dinner with the event. Interested viewers reserve their place by emailing the director directly through the festival website.
Denmark’s approach to welcoming foreigners has been a matter of public debate, often framed by politics rather than personal experience.
This is why Geoffroy chose this as the main theme of the festival. “Denmark seems to be asking itself: ‘We have all these foreigners. Should we keep them? Send them home?’ So let’s have this conversation in a friendly way, starting with a friendly proposition. We want to show that it is possible to welcome.”
It’s not the first time Geoffroy uses art to make a provocation about the roles of internationals in Denmark. He is known for projects such as Merde de Cheval Royal (Royal Horse Shit) from 2008, where immigrants in Copenhagen collected horse droppings left on the streets to prevent accidents.
This first
edition of the Welcome Film Festival is also a personal
statement for Geoffroy as an artist. Known for his work with
formats such as Emergency
Room, Biennalist, Critical Run, and Awareness Muscle, he
often creates exhibitions where urgency, collaboration, and
social awareness are central. “We are constantly in emergency,”
he explained. “Emergency has taken another meaning. The solution
is to get together. This festival is an answer to what I can do
as an artist with the emergency. It is a proposition and a
solution.”