Thirty years after Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg gave the arthouse film world a much-needed kick within the pants with the Dogma 95, often known as Dogme 95, motion, a brand new era of Nordic filmmakers is selecting up the torch.
A group of 4 up-and-coming Danish administrators, Might el-Toukhy (Queen of Hearts), Milad Alami (Opponent), Annika Berg (Crew Hurricane), Isabella Eklöf (Kalak), and Jesper Simply (Vanishing Girl) are launching Dogma 25, a manifesto-driven initiative designed to rescue inventive integrity from the pressures of the fashionable movie trade.
“Dogma 25 is a rescue mission and a cultural rebellion,” the collective declared in an announcement launched in Cannes on Saturday. “We stand collectively to defend inventive freedom as a protect towards pointlessness and powerlessness.”
The 5 filmmakers are backed by a few of Denmark’s most established manufacturing entities. The venture was spearheaded by el-Toukhy, who approached Zentropa final 12 months. Zentropa producers Louise Vesth (Melancholia, Nymphomaniac) and Sisse Graum Jørgensen (The Hunt, One other Spherical) will oversee the rollout, with help from the Danish Movie Institute, DR (Danish Broadcasting Company), Nordisk Movie Distribution, and worldwide gross sales agent TrustNordisk. The administrators can have their first movies totally financed (to a funds of 10 million Danish Krone, or $1.45 million), with a theatrical launch assured for Denmark. TrustNordisk will deal with world gross sales for all of the Dogma 25 tasks.
“In ’95, we made movies within the certainty of peace and created a revolt towards conformity,” von Trier and Vinterberg mentioned in a joint assertion. “In ’25, new dogmas are created, now in a world of struggle and uncertainty. We want you one of the best of luck in your march towards reconquering Danish movie.”
Von Trier and Vinterberg, along with administrators Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, shaped the Dogme 95 Collective, with strict “vows of chastity” requiring administrators to make use of handheld cameras and pure mild, and banning using diegetic music or style conventions.
Movies made below the Dogme label included Vinterberg’s Cannes Jury winner The Celebration (1998), Von Trier’s The Idiots (1999), Kragh-Jacobsen’s Mifune (1999), and Levring’s The King is Alive (2000). The motion went worldwide with Lovers (1999) from French director Jean-Marc Barr and Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) from American unhealthy boy Concord Korine. The motion is credited with revitalizing indie cinema within the late ’90s.
Like its 1995 predecessor, Dogma 25 is underpinned by a stringent vow of chastity and ten dogmas that set strict artistic and manufacturing guidelines. However whereas Dogma 95 was primarily about aesthetics, conceived as an assault on the vainness of the director class and on overly-produced, superficial artwork home movies (primarily from France), Dogma 25’s prime goal is the technique of manufacturing, with a concentrate on how movies are made, not what they appear to be.
The ten dogmas of Dogma 25 are: “Scripts have to be unique and handwritten to protect artistic instinct; at the very least half of every movie have to be freed from dialogue to emphasise visible storytelling; the web is banned from the artistic course of to make sure connection to the bodily world. Funding can solely be accepted if it comes with out editorial affect, and not more than ten crew members are allowed behind the digicam. Movies have to be shot of their real-world areas, with no beauty alterations to faces or our bodies except required by the story. All supplies — units, props, costumes — have to be reused or discovered, rejecting consumerism. Productions have to be accomplished inside a 12 months to protect urgency and artistic move. Above all, every movie have to be made “as if it have been the filmmaker’s final.”
“In a world the place formulaic movies based mostly on algorithms and synthetic visible expression are gaining traction, it’s our mission to face up for the flawed, distinct, and human imprint,” reads the group’s manifesto. “We struggle towards the forces working to cut back cinematic artwork to an ultra-processed client product.”
DR’s head of drama Henriette Marienlund added, “We agree with the need of discovering new instructions as a way to construct expertise and convey new voices into Danish movie. We have been there for Dogma 95, so after all we’re additionally alongside for the journey in 2025.”
Nordisk Movie Distribution’s SVP Kenneth Wiberg pointed to the relevance of the second: “Dogma has all the time centred round related tales, and the market at present wants story greater than ever.”
TrustNordisk’s managing director Susan Wendt referred to as the launch “the right option to have fun the thirtieth anniversary of Dogma 95,” saying she regarded ahead to bringing the brand new slate of movies to international audiences.
The primary Dogma 25 movies are anticipated to enter manufacturing later this 12 months. A world launch and pageant premieres are anticipated for 2026.
You’ll be able to learn the total Dogma 25 manifesto and the ten vows of chastity under.
Manifesto:
DOGMA 25 is a collective of filmmakers based in Copenhagen within the spring of 2025. Our acknowledged goal is to protect the originality of cinema and the chance to create movie by itself phrases.
The function of the director has more and more been decreased to that of venture supervisor, the movie to a commodity, and the viewers to shoppers. Experimental apply is stifled by concern of risk-taking, which suffocates inventive exploration and silences distinctive voices. When movies are merely executed and never allowed to evolve organically, it places the artwork type in peril of turning into practical, obedient and thereby irrelevant.
In a world the place formulaic movies based mostly on algorithms and synthetic visible expression are gaining traction, it’s our mission to face up for the flawed, distinct, and human imprint. We champion the uncompromising and unpredictable and we struggle the forces working to cut back cinematic artwork to an ultra-processed client good.
By cutting down manufacturing, we make sure that everybody on the group has an intimate relationship with the movie and its message. This may improve mutual belief and a way of collective duty for the movie and for one another. It additionally permits us to safeguard the flexibleness that’s very important in making a artistic course of dynamic and intuitive, relatively than purely govt.
We have fun DOGMA 95, all of the filmmakers who got here earlier than us, and people who will come after. We stand collectively to defend inventive freedom as a protect towards pointlessness and powerlessness. DOGMA 25 is a rescue mission and a cultural rebellion.
To guard and protect what we maintain expensive, we hereby undergo the unflinching and unbreakable algorithm referred to as: THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
THE VOW OF CHASTITY:
I vow to undergo the next algorithm drawn up and confirmed by DOGMA 25:
1. The script have to be unique and handwritten by the director.
We compel ourselves to write down the script by hand as a way to nurture the type of instinct that flows most freely from the dream, channelled via the hand onto the paper.
2. A minimum of half the movie have to be with out dialogue.
We insist on a cinematic strategy to filmmaking, as a result of we consider in visible storytelling and think about the viewers.
3. The web is off limits in all artistic processes.
We commit to supply the movies counting on actual individuals inside our bodily actuality – relatively than in a digital one infused with algorithms.
4. We’ll solely settle for funding with no content material altering circumstances hooked up.
We assume duty for preserving budgets down so the group retains remaining say in all inventive selections.
5. Not more than 10 individuals behind the digicam.
We decide to working in shut collaborations to construct belief and strengthen our shared imaginative and prescient.
6. The movie have to be shot the place the narrative takes place.
Movie as an artwork type turns into synthetic and generic once we painting a location in a false mild.
7. We’re not allowed to make use of make-up or manipulate faces and our bodies except it’s a part of the narrative.
Simply as we try to keep up the authenticity of the situation, we additionally need to painting the human physique with out a filter. We have fun it – warts and all.
8. All the pieces regarding the movie’s manufacturing have to be rented, borrowed, discovered, or used.
We commit to creating movies utilizing objects that exist already and resign the ahistorical and self-destructive tradition of consumerism.
9. The movie have to be made in no a couple of 12 months.
We abstain from any prolonged processes that stand in the way in which of artistic move.
10. Create the movie as if it have been your final.