Politics to Take Center Stage at European Film Awards

At this year’s FIFA World Cup, all political displays — even ones as innocuous as a rainbow-colored armband showing solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community — have been banned. Host nation Qatar has spent an estimated $200 billion to stage the biggest show in global sports and any on-air references to its questionable human rights record, treatment of women, migrant workers etc. would just spoil the vibe. 

But this Saturday, as fans sit down to watch the sanitized World Cup quarterfinals, another show will be taking place, one where the organizers like to wear their politics on their sleeves. Reykjavik, Iceland, some 5,500 miles, and truly a world, away from Doha, will host the 35^th European Film Awards (EFAs). 

TV ratings — the show will be broadcast in 10 countries and live streamed in 24 — are unlikely to match the soccer tournament. But the European Film Academy is determined to use its platform to take a stand on some of the most hot-button topics of our time, including the global climate crisis, the war in Ukraine and political unrest in Iran. 

The European Academy has always been overtly political. In 2016, shortly after the U.S. election of President Donald Trump, then-EFA chair, Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland, opened the awards with an SNL-style political sketch in which she called for the restoration of “democracy and tolerance” to the U.S. In 2019, the evening’s biggest round of applause was for Oleg Senstov, the Ukrainian director imprisoned in Russian on trumped-up charges, who was finally released after five years of political pressure by the European Academy. 

At the EFAs, political speeches don’t get played off the stage: they get standing ovations. 

Ukraine, understandably, will be in focus this year. The European Film Academy has condemned Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and was among the first cultural institutions to back a ban on Russian cultural exports. Russian films have been excluded from this year’s EFAs. In a sign of solidarity with the filmmakers of Ukraine, this year’s Eurimages Co-Production Award, which honors excellence in European co-production, will be given to not one but all film producers in Ukraine. 

European Film Academy Chairman Mike Downey called the move “an expression of strong appreciation for the growing quality of Ukrainian production in the past years, and as a sign of ongoing support now that the infrastructure for production support within Ukraine has collapsed.” 

The European Academy also supports Ukrainian producers in need through an emergency fund managed by the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk, a group set up by the Academy together with the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. 

For the first time, the climate will also take center stage at the EFAs, with the inaugural European Sustainability Award, the Prix Film4Climate, a prize meant to celebrate a “European institution, company or film” which provides an outstanding contribution to furthering sustainability in the movie industry. 

Set up as a partnership between the European Academy and the World Bank Group’s Connect4Climate program, the first Prix Film4Climate will go to the European Commission for its European Green Deal, a set of policy initiatives aimed at making the European Union climate-neutral by 2050. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will accept the award in Reykjavik.

Finally, expect a good chunk of the 2022 EFA airtime to be devoted to the politics of the Middle East. Holy Spider, a sharp attack on the misogyny of post-revolution Iranian society from Iranian-born Danish director Ali Abassi, is one of the evening’s frontrunners, with four nominations, including for best film, best director and a best actress nom for star Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who is considered a near shoe-in for the win. And for the first time, the EFAs will give its most prestigious prize, the lifetime achievement in European cinema honor, to a Palestinian filmmaker, Elia Suleiman, director of Divine Intervention (2002) and It Must Be Heaven (2019). 

Downey noted it is particularly fitting that Suleiman receive the honor in Reykjavik, as Iceland “was the first Western European country to recognize the independence of Palestine [and] full diplomatic relations exist between the two countries.”

But however passionate the speeches will be, the best expression of EFA politics remains the list of nominated films. From Marie Kreutzer’s feminist period drama Corsage (nominated for best film, best director and best actress for star Vicky Krieps) to Ruben Östlund’s capitalist satire Triangle of Sadness (four noms, including for best film and best director), to Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, an examination of systemic racism in France (nominated for best director), progressive messages are everywhere at the 2022 EFAs.

FIFA should take note.