The Father, Florian Zeller’s disorientating and poignant dementia drama starring Anthony Hopkins, won best actor and best screenplay at this year’s European film awards – but was ultimately pipped to best film by Quo Vadis, Aida?, a shattering depiction of the calamitous 1995 UN attempt to prevent the Srebrenica massacre.
Bosnian film-maker Jasmila Žbanić also won best director for the film – a pan-European endeavour involving 12 production companies from nine countries – while Jasna Đuričić won best actress for her performance as the beleaguered UN interpreter trying to save her family from being ethnically cleansed with other Muslims by Bosnian-Serb paramilitaries.
Žbanić dedicated the film’s award to the country’s women and their peacebuilding efforts following the Bosnian war: “Women always have to fix the mess made by men. They taught us how to turn destruction into love.”
More cinema and stories from female perspectives would be needed in the future, she warned. “We need more complex stories in order to make our audience ready for very complex times ahead of us.”
Hopkins was not present to pick up his best actor award, which follows his Oscar and Bafta for the film. It was accepted remotely by first-time film director Zeller. For the second year in succession, the awards took place as a virtual ceremony streamed live from Berlin – where only the host, German actor Annabelle Mandeng, and a smattering of presenters, award-winners and nominees were present in the studio for this 34th edition.
It was a brisk and pragmatic occasion, low on the socio-political fire and state-of-Europe addresses seen in pre-Covid European film awards. But Mandeng did salute the continent’s film-makers for “moving mountains” to make productions happen during the pandemic “Making films in a time of Covid is an even bigger challenge. Making films in a time when going to the cinema remains subject to restrictions is a big act of faith,” she said.
British director Steve McQueen won the prize for European innovative storytelling – only the second time the European film academy has given the award – for his five-film anthology about the UK African-Caribbean experience, Small Axe.
The prize was presented to him by rapper Tricky and German musician Joy Denalane, who made an impassioned case for its wider relevance. “The films are set in London, yet I saw my own German childhood experience in them,” she said. “Structural racism and unconscious and conscious bias continue in the here and now in so many European countries.”
Ninety-year-old Hungarian director Márta Mészáros, whose six-decade career encompasses pioneering gender-focused documentaries and bold New Wave-style features, won a lifetime achievement award for her “original feminist progressivism”. Denmark’s Susanne Bier – who has graduated from 2002’s Open Hearts, part of the minimalist Dogme movement, to 2018’s Netflix hit Bird Box, via serial collaborations with Mads Mikkelsen – was recognised for European achievement in world cinema.
Cannes Palme d’Or winner Titane – Julie Ducournau’s divisive, gender-fluid, ultra-violent love fable featuring a woman who is impregnated by a muscle car – was the night’s big loser, going home with a sole award for hair and makeup. Emerald Fennell’s #MeToo black comedy Promising Young Woman, a British-American co-production, took the critics’ Fipresci award.
The decision to switch to a stripped-back virtual format with a minimal on-site audience was taken on 1 December, with cases rising rapidly across Germany and five days after the WHO announced Omicron as a variant of concern.
In a nice demotic touch, film clubs and theatre groups around the continent – from Lisbon to the Finnish Arctic Circle – were asked to present the nominees for many of the awards. Only on one occasion did the dreaded virtual gremlins creep in: when best documentary director Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s sound failed and he was forced to convey his thanks in makeshift sign language.
Full list of awards
Best film Quo Vadis, Aida?
Best comedy Ninja Baby
European Discovery (Prix Fipresci) Promising Young Woman
Best documentary Flee
Best animated feature Flee
Best short film
My Uncle Tudor
Best director Jasmila Žbanić, Quo Vadis, Aida?
Best actress Jasna Đuričić, Quo Vadis, Aida?
Best actor
Anthony Hopkins, The Father
Best screenwriter Florian Zeller, Christopher Hampton, The Father
Best cinematography Great Freedom
Best editing Unclenching the Fists
Best production design Natural Light
Best costume design Ammonite
Best hair & makeup
Titane
Best original score
Great Freedom
Best sound The Innocents
Best visual effects Lamb
EFA lifetime achievement award Márta Mészáros
European achievement in world cinema Susanne Bier
European innovative storytelling Steve McQueen
European co-production award (Prix Eurimages) Maria Ekerhovd
European young audience award The Crossing
European university film award Flee
• This article was amended on 12 December 2021. The events depicted in the film Quo Vadis, Aida? took place in 1995, not 1992 as an earlier version said
