European Film Awards Offer Art House Features Key Support System
Acclaimed international titles like ‘Close,’ ‘Triangle of Sadness’ and ‘Holy Spider’ will compete — and generate Oscar buzz — in what the European Film Academy CEO calls “the best group of nominees we’ve had in years.”
An intimate drama of two pre-pubescent boys turns deeply tragic in Lukas Dhont’s Close;
Ali Abbasi’s Iran-set crime thriller Holy Spider centers on a serial killer and the female journalist trying to catch him;
Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage is a period portrait of an Austrian empress struggling for emancipation and against ideals of femininity;
the Catalan-set Alcarràs from Carla Simón spotlights a family of peach farmers on their final summer harvest;
Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness rollicks as a capitalist satire with a set piece of impressive projectile vomiting.
Alongside Dhont, Kreutzer, Abbasi and Östlund, best director nominees include the venerable 84-year-old Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski for his touching donkey-driven odyssey EO.
Then there is France’s Alice Diop for Saint Omer, her narrative debut, a legal drama inspired by a real-life case in which an eloquent, fiercely intelligent Franco-Senegalese woman faces trial for the murder of her daughter.
“You never really know how the year will turn out after the first big festivals. But after Berlin and Cannes, we knew it was looking very special,” says European Film Academy CEO Matthijs Wouter Knol about this year’s EFA crop. “It’s one of the best groups of nominees we’ve had in years.”
The 35th EFA ceremony takes place December 10 in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The timing of the event places the ceremony smack in the middle of awards season. Multiple nominees — best picture contenders Close, Alcarràs, Holy Spider and Corsage, alongside EO and Saint Omer, as well as Italian drama Nostalgia from director Mario Martone (whose lead, Pierfrancesco Favino, is a contender for EFA’s best actor award) — are in the running for the 2023 best international feature film Oscar.
“The timing [for the Oscars] is really perfect,” says Alcarràs producer María Zamora. “Being selected as one of the top five films in Europe really focuses attention on you at exactly the right time. But the European Film Awards are special, because European cinema is what I grew up on. These auteur-driven films, made by people with a point of view on their societies, it’s what shaped us.”
That support system has become even more crucial this year, as war rages on Europe’s eastern border, laying waste to Ukraine’s nascent film industry. This year’s Eurimages co-production award, usually given to a single, exceptional European producer, will be awarded to all the producers of Ukraine.
“It’s an acknowledgment of the incredible work Ukrainian filmmakers have done in the past few years, building up a real film industry,” says Knol, pointing to Ukraine’s 2022 EFA nominees, including Simon Lereng Wilmont’s best documentary contender A House Made of Splinters and European Discovery nominees Pamfir from Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk and Peter Kerekes’ 107 Mothers. “But this is also a sign of continuing support now that Ukraine’s film infrastructure has been destroyed.”
A delegation of Ukrainian producers, all of whom are European Film Academy members, will accept the honor in Reykjavík.
“We want to be the heart of the European film industry,” says Knol. “Which means not just honoring the best European films every year, but making sure European cinema has a future.”
