Copenhagen Silent Film Festival

22 – 26 JANUARY 2025

Copenhagen Silent Film Festival 2025

January 22 – 26 we invite all to come and enjoy the annual Copenhagen Silent Film Festival.

This year’s festival is a celebration of the soon finalized silent film digitization project -- more than 400 works from the golden days of Danish silent cinema – the greatest film-dissemination effort ever in Denmark; made possible by a generous donation from the A.P. Møller Foundation, the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.

The festival opens with Danish director Benjamin Christensen’s ‘Seine Frau, die Unbekannte' (1923), which has been digitized in 4K at the Danish Film Institute’s film archive. The opening night on January 22 furthermore includes a screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s early comedy ‘Kohlhiesels Töchter’ (1920), starring Emil Jannings and Henny Porten, a new restoration by Murnau-Stiftung, partially based on a nitrate print surviving in the Danish Film Institute’s collections.

For families and younger audiences

On Saturday January 25, we invite all to our traditional family day featuring silent film stars Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy, accompanied as always by live music by composer and conductor/bandmaster Lars Fjeldmose. On Sunday January 26, the Sounding Silents event will feature young talents from the Danish music conservatories presenting their work on adding new music to selected Danish silent film clips.

The foreign films

Among the international films in this year’s festival program are ‘Poil de carotte’ (Julien Duvivier, 1925), ‘I Was Born, But…’ (Yasujiro Ozu, 1932), Allan Dwan’s ‘East Side, West Side’ (1927), ‘Vanina’ (Arthur von Gerlach, 1922) and Richard Oswald’s ‘Der Reigen’ (1920), both featuring Danish silent film star Asta Nielsen.

A celebration of Danish film history

As this year’s festival focuses on the digitisation of the Danish silent films we will be hosting an archive workshop on the process of digitising, preserving and presenting silent film treasures from The Danish Film Institute’s archive. We will screen hidden gems such as Holger-Madsens little known ‘Was is los mit Nanette?’ (1929) on Friday January 24, and some greater classics, too, such as Carl Th. Dreyers ‘Master of the House’ (1925) as the festival closing event. And last, but not least: don’t miss our Silent Disco event on Friday January 24.

Enjoy the festival!



Sophie Engberg Sonne and Thomas C. Christensen, festival curators / The Danish Film Institute