A Sentimental Journey
Looking back on last week’s European Film Awards.
A week ago today, the 38th European Film Awards took place in Berlin. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I served on the nomination committee for the European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI category, and was therefore invited to attend the ceremony alongside my colleagues Salome Kikaleishvili and Ibtisam Omer. It was a nice weekend in the German capital, complete with a sneak preview of the Deutsche Kinemathek’s temporary new exhibition space (shoutout to Heleen Gerritsen, the Kinemathek’s artistic director, and her team for the excellent work they’re doing).
The awards ceremony was very Norwegian, partially on purpose: Liv Ullmann, the foremost example of Nordic acting royalty, received the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award and one of many standing ovations throughout the night, keeping the room enthralled with her grace and wit; and, by virtue of having won the Discovery prize last year for Armand, Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel – Liv’s grandson – was in attendance to announce this year’s winner. That turned out to be Laura Carreira for On Falling, a compelling portrait of the precarious nature of the job market in today’s world (specifically the UK as seen through the eyes of a Portuguese immigrant).
And then there was the grand triumph of Sentimental Value, a film that has won over people continuously since its debut in Cannes last year (I wrote about it here). Joachim Trier’s character study dealing with the sometimes fractured relationship between art and life was the undisputed champion of the night, winning Best Film, Director, Screenwriter, Actor, Actress and Composer. The notable split between that movie and Sirat, which took home most of the technical awards (Casting Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Production Designer, Sound Designer), indicates that Trier’s work had more of an emotional impact, a fact also reflected in its multiple Oscar nominations (nine, including Trier and all four main cast members).
The other big triumph, one that kept the ceremony from outstaying its welcome despite the four-hour duration (with a break in the middle), was Mark Cousins’ artistic direction, with the evening punctuated by various riveting montages highlighting the European side of film history via the kind of image-driven association the Scottish-Irish director is known for in his documentaries (the latest of which will, fittingly enough, premiere at the Berlinale in a few weeks). Cousins also came up with the night’s great souvenir, a flip book celebrating the most enduring images across the nominated films (the other memento, a potato, came courtesy of one of the presenters, Rosalie Varda).
In a market and media landscape pervasively (and sometimes perversely) dominated by American film discourse, such a ceremony was an important reminder of the power of European cinema, and I am once again grateful to FIPRESCI and the European Film Academy for inviting me to be a tiny part of the whole process. And if you have the chance, dear readers, do watch Sentimental Value and Sirat as they keep hitting theaters worldwide. They’re two very different, but equally memorable experiences.