CPH:DOX 2026 - Mare's Nest

The young girl Moon is on a journey through a world without adults. On her way along coastlines and through wastelands, she meets other children and young people who are building a new world in the ruins of the old one. Double CPH:DOX winner Ben Rivers' new film (based on Don DeLillo's play ‘The Word for Snow’) takes place in an unknown place on the timeline between the Stone Age and the future, and in a mythological and possibly post-apocalyptic universe of rituals and games. You get no answers, but the questions are deeply original.

‘Mare's Nest’ is a truly trippy ride, even by Ben Rivers' standards. Whereas the British artist and filmmaker has focused on folklore and ancient myths in his many films, his latest work is almost hallucinatory in its cinematic power. But it is also rich in historical ideas – from Plato's cave to Darwin's theory of evolution – which are connected in new and deeply original ways.