"Copenhagen Does Not Exist" stirred and heightened my concern for the world we live in. The film is an unsuccessful attempt to break out of the system of familiar life patterns: traditional and experimental lifestyles that vary significantly from the average. From genuine communities where everyone is active to eco-villages, various communes... The range of acceptable ways of living is, in reality, very narrow.

The film about the mysterious disappearance of the young woman Ida ends as it ends. It is suggested in the film that the main characters decide to take their own lives. Ida leaves, and her boyfriend Sander returns to life. Her character is portrayed only through Sander's eyes, who then, confined to an apartment, confesses to her father. In the end, Ida truly departs, meaning her body was not found and returned to the system (autopsy, identification of the body by relatives, burial...). And so, she does not allow her father and brother to confront the fact that Ida is no more. This leaves the father in false hope that there is still a chance for her to return. It seems that people need one of these two options to mourn, reconcile, make peace with themselves, and move on.

We know the least about the character Sander, who somehow decides, if he can decide at all, for hibernation and degeneration instead of following the path to adulthood. Sander is a complete stranger to us viewers (and to himself, as seen through the film). The only thing given to us is that his father died recently, three days ago. Now wandering through the city (with him in the bookstore and her outside), he sees her, Ida, through the window, a soul related, compatible, and equally wounded. Through the glass, as a metaphor for a mirror, he actually sees the mirrored soul of himself. Sander represents the degeneration of the modern man without any ambitions. Complete absence of goals, complete absence of will and healthy aggression, absence of combativeness. As if he wants to return to the womb, through a regressive relationship with Ida, where everything is safe and provided, instead of sovereignty, into life. There is no potential for him to start a family because he is too damaged, completely without his own internal compass. He couldn't even destroy himself, as seen in the film when he tries to end his life. The only thing he managed was to let himself be led by an even more sick person than himself, into ruin. He followed Ida's wish to depart.

For me, the film is a metaphor for the decadence of Western society. The "Balkan Father," exploring in a closed space, an old apartment left to decay, where everything is under control, everything is recorded with a camera, investigates what happened to his anorexic, limping daughter. This is a metaphor for the decaying "limping and faltering Europe." Europe, still a rich society, allows young people to live in comfortable isolation and do nothing. Instead of personal development and facing all the challenges life brings, they somehow hibernate in a seemingly safe zone of comfort. But this turns out to be the most dangerous, as it brings emptiness and death instead of meaning, biophilia, and connection to all living things. The scene of the "escape from the city" seems like in apocalyptic films when you take the essentials and just run. And here, the "catastrophe" is actually the primary family that represents a threat. It's an escape from

traditional values, multi-generational life patterns, into something new (which they assume) will be less painful than what they are currently experiencing. In essence, it's an escape from internal existential primary emptiness.

"Copenhagen Does Not exist" is a film for which everything is still not entirely clear; the message is not transparent and does not offer an answer on the first attempt. On the contrary, new and new questions open up in terms of: Why can't we overcome established patterns of self-destruction? What's happening with the modern man and woman? Where are the solutions? And that is actually the most beautiful beauty of this film.