All posts tagged: Joachim Trier

European Film Award Winners

European Film Award Winners

Published by Daniella Wilson

The European Film Awards (EFA), the top pan-European cinema honor, has kicked off in Berlin. You can check out the livestream of the awards ceremony here. For the first time, the EFAs are being held mid-January, smack in the middle of awards season, in an attempt to position the event as a harbinger for the Baftas and the Oscars and generate buzz around European contenders. And, indeed, all of this year’s EFA Best Film nominees are Oscar contenders: Joachim Trier‘s Norwegian melodrama Sentimental Value, Jafar Panahi‘s Palme d’Or winning Iranian/French thriller It Was Just an Accident, Olivier Laxe’s post-apocalyptic road movie Sirāt, Mascha Schilinski’s multi-generational German period film Sound of Falling, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s harrowing Gaza drama The Voice of Hind Rajab. In the director’s race, Laxe, Panahi, Trier and Schilinski will be going up against Yorgos Lanthimos, nominated for the Emma Stone/Jessie Plemons starrer Bugonia. Trier’s Sentimental Value has a slight edge in the overall nominations, with 5 noms across the top 5 categories. Laxe’s Sirāt is right behind it with 4 noms, for best feature, director, actor and screenplay, followed by It Was Just an Accident and Sound of Falling, with 3 noms each. …

Matthijs Wouter Knol on the European Academy’s Awards Season Pivot

Matthijs Wouter Knol on the European Academy’s Awards Season Pivot

Published by Daniella Wilson

This year’s awards race has seen an unprecedented surge for European talent with several films from continental auteurs — including Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Oliver Laxe’s Sirat, and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident (a French-Iranian production from the Iranian director) — heading into the final lap as Oscar favorites. No longer relegated to the sidelines of the international circuit, European cinema is front and center in the conversation, regularly appearing on both Golden Globe and Academy Award shortlists. This year, the European Film Academy has decided to lean into this momentum with a bold strategic pivot. By shifting their premium honors, the European Film Awards (EFAs) from December to January (the 38th European Film Awards are in Berlin on Saturday), they are slotting European films directly within the global awards window, hoping to capitalize on the promotional machinery that traditionally favors Hollywood. Knol spoke to THR about the strategic calendar shift, his hopes for a European star system, and why (unlike, say, the Golden Globes) there will be plenty of politics on stage …

Jafar Panahi Iran protests, Returning Prison Come Out New Script

Jafar Panahi Iran protests, Returning Prison Come Out New Script

Published by Daniella Wilson

Dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi says anti-government protests sweeping Iran are inevitable as the country’s authoritarian regime is crumbling on many fronts. “We are dealing with a state that has fallen in all possible aspects. It has fallen politically, economically, environmentally and ideologically and from the point of view of foreign policy. Every which way you look at it, it has fallen,” Panahi told a Palm Springs International Film Festival panel of international directors vying for the Academy Award for best international feature film that was moderated by Kevin Cassidy, international news editor at The Hollywood Reporter. Panahi is currently on an international Oscar campaign to promote It Was Just an Accident, his Palme d’Or winner in Cannes. He argued that Iran’s clerical establishment remains in power because of its use of brutal and now bloody repression to end a popular uprising. “Because it is using force, it is still in place. If [the protests] didn’t happen today, it would have happened soon. And my sense is that people have decided what they want,” Panahi added. He …