European Film Awards shift into US awards season; Sentimental Value and Sirāt lead

The European Film Awards have moved their annual ceremony from December to the middle of the US awards season. The 38th edition takes place at Berlin’s House of World Cultures this Saturday, with Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value and Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt among the leading nominees.

Sentimental Value is nominated in five categories including best European film, and has already won the Grand Prix at Cannes and a Golden Globe for Stellan Skarsgård. The film is “seen as a major contender at the Oscars in March,” the coverage said, while Scott Roxborough of the Hollywood Reporter said: “Hollywood has stopped making movies for adults, with a few exceptions” and that Sentimental Value is “the kind of serious dramatic film that Hollywood is generating fewer and fewer of.” Sirāt has four nominations; Mascha Schilinski’s The Sound of Falling and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident each have three.

This year the ceremony will be “curated” by Irish documentarian Mark Cousins as a “live film essay” rather than hosted, and distributors have held special screenings to canvass for votes. Mike Downey, outgoing chair of the European Film Academy, said moving the dates “radically boosts our profile and, indeed, European cinema’s importance in the international awards season.” The EFAs have long styled themselves as “Europe’s answer to the Oscars,” even if their impact on box office has been limited.

Key Topics

Culture, European Film Awards, Sentimental Value, Sirāt, Joachim Trier, Stellan Skarsgård