Norwegian director Joachim Trier is leading the race for a triumph at the European film awards, with five nominations in key categories for his family drama Sentimental Value.
The Cannes Grand Prix winner is nominated for best European film, best screenplay and best director, with further best actor and best actress nominations for Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve.
In the film, which comes to cinemas in the UK and other European territories this December, Skarsgård plays a once-famous film director trying to repair ties with his two estranged daughters.
Spanish director Oliver Laxe’s techno thriller Sirāt, set at a rave in the Moroccan desert, is another frontrunner with four nominations. German film-maker Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, which explores cross-generational traumas at a farmhouse in the Brandenburg countryside, is nominated for three prizes, the same as Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, this year’s Palme d’Or winner.
The 15-film shortlist for European film of the year includes five animated features and five documentaries, including Andres Veiel’s portrait of Nazi-collaborating film-maker Leni Riefenstahl and Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o Morte!, hailed by Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw as a “protofascist Passport to Pimlico”.
Often described as Europe’s answer to the Oscars, the European film awards are overseen by the European film academy and were unveiled at the Seville European film festival in Spain on Tuesday.
Previously held in December, the prize ceremony will take place in Berlin on 17 January next year, closer to the peak of the US awards seasons in a bid for higher visibility among European audiences.
At last year’s awards, held in the Swiss city of Lucerne, French director Jacques Audiard’s musical Emilia Pérez achieved a near clean sweep with four out of five top prizes.
Full list of nominations
Best European film
Afternoons of Solitude
Arco
Dog of God (Dieva Suns)
Fiume o Morte!
It Was Just an Accident
Little Amelie
Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake
Riefenstahl
Sentimental Value
Sirāt
Songs of Slow Burning Earth
Sound of Falling
Tales from the Magic Garden
The Voice of Hind Rajab
With Hasan in Gaza
Best European documentary
Afternoons of Solitude
Fiume o Morte!
Riefenstahl
Songs of Slow Burning Earth
With Hasan in Gaza
Best European animated feature film
Arco
Dog of God
Little Amelie
Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake
Tales from the Magic Garden
Best European director
Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia
Oliver Laxe, Sirāt
Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident
Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Falling
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Best European actress
Leonie Benesch, Late Shift
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Duse
Léa Drucker, Case 137
Vicky Krieps, Love Me Tender
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Best European actor
Sergi López, Sirāt
Mads Mikkelsen, The Last Viking
Toni Servillo, La Grazia
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
Idan Weiss, Franz
Best European screenwriter
Santiago Fillol and Oliver Laxe, Sirāt
Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident
Mascha Schilinski and Louise Peter, Sound of Falling
Paolo Sorrentino, La Grazia
Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
European Discovery – Prix Fipresci
Little Trouble Girls
My Father’s Shadow
On Falling
One of Those Days When Hemme Dies
Sauna
Under the Grey Sky
European young audience award
Arco
I Accidentally Wrote a Book
Siblings
