BERLIN – For the first time in years, the race for Europe’s top cinema honor, the European Film Awards, is wide open, with no obvious front runner among the 46 titles submitted for contention.
The EFA long list, announced Monday, ranges from local hits such as Juan Antonio Bayona‘s Spanish blockbuster The Impossible with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGreggor and Margarethe von Trotta’s sleeper biopic Hannah Arendt to critical darlings including Ari Folman‘s animated sci-fi drama The Congress starring Robin Wright and Icelandic survival tale The Deep from director Balthasar Kormakur.
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Budgets and styles vary from the opulent, Studio-esque and Oscar-winning approach in Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina starring Kiera Knightley and Jude Law the gritty, near documentary approach of Danis Tanovic in his Silver Bear winner An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.
In the 20 countries with the largest membership in the European Film Academy, national members picked a single title to represent their country at the EFAs. The remaining long list titles were selected by a selection committee made up of EFA Board Members and invited experts.
From the long list, the 2,900 members of the European Film Academy will vote for the nominations in the categories best European film, director, actor, actress and screenwriter. A 7-person jury will decide in the technical categories of best European cinematographer, editor, production designer, costume designer, composer and sound designer.
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The EFA nominations will be announced at the Seville European Film Festival Nov. 9 and the winners at the 26th European Film Awards in Berlin Dec. 7.
Long list of 2013 EFA Contenders:
8-Ball (Finland)
Director: Aku Louhimies
Boy Eating The Bird’s Food (Greece)
Director: Ektoras Lygizos
The Eternal Return Of Antonis Parasaskevas (Greece)
Director: Elina Psykou
I’m So Excited! (Spain)
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Anna Karenina (UK)
Director: Joe Wright
Araf- Somewhere In Between (Turkey/France/Germany)
Director: Yesim Ustaoglu
Eat Sleep Die (Sweden)
Director: Gabriela Pichler
Berberian Sound Studio (UK)
Director: Peter Strickland
The Best Offer (Italy)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Blancanieves (Spain/France)
Director: Pablo Berger
Borgman (Netherlands/Belgium/Denmark)
Director: Alex van Warmerdam
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
Director: Felix van Groeningen
The Congress
(Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/France/Belgium)
Director: Ari Folman
The Color of the Chameleon (Bulgaria)
Director: Emil Christov
In The House (France)
Director: Francois Ozon
The Deep (Iceland/Norway)
Director: Baltasar Kormakur
A Long and Happy Life (Russia)
Director: Boris Khlebnikov
The Last Sentence (Sweden)
Director: Jan Troell
An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (Bosnia & Herzegovina/France/Slovenia)
Director: Danis Tanovic
The Great Beauty (Italy/France)
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Crossing Boundaries (Austria)
Director: Florian Flicker
In Bloom (Germany/Georgia/France)
Directors: Nana Ekvtimishvili & Simon Gross
Hannah Arendt
(Germany/Luxembourg/France/Israel)
Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Burning Bush (Czech Republic)
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Imagine (Poland/France/Portugal)
Director: Andrzej Jakimowski
The Impossible (Spain)
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Stranger By The Lake (France)
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Betrayal (Russia)
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov
A Hijacking (Denmark)
Director: Tobias Lindholm
Kon-Tiki (Norway/Denmark/UK/Germany/Sweden)
Directors: Joachim Ronning & Espen Sandberg
Circles
(Serbia/Germany/France/Croatia/Slovenia)
Director: Srdan Golubovic
Fill The Void (Israel)
Director: Rama Burshtein
A Strange Course of Events (Israel/France)
Director: Raphael Nadjari
My Dog Killer (Slovakia/Czech Republic)
Director: Mira Fornay
