True giants of cinema gathered in Berlin today for the annual European Film Awards. It was honestly a bit overwhelming to see Wim Wenders, Juliette Binoche, Claire Denis, and Pedro Almodóvar all sitting side by side in the front row. How to even imagine the cinema without them?
In a surreal sort of way, what was happening on stage was even more overwhelming... but for its inexplicable surreality (more on that in a bit) and its time travelling nature.Regarding the latter due to the indifferent nature of release dates across borders the overall champ was The Favourite which had its American awards run a full year ago.
The winners and more commentary follows.
Costuming goddess Sandy Powell and the producers of The Favourite
FILM The Favourite
COMEDY The Favourite...
PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD Cold War
DIRECTOR Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite
ACTRESS Olivia Colman, The Favourite
It was a huge night for the best film of 2018 as The Favourite took four of the top prizes and also some craft awards for good measure.
ACTOR Antonio Banderas, Pain & Glory
Claes Bang, who won the Best Actor EFA for The Square a few years back did a beautiful job extolling the virtues of the nominees, most of whom seemed to be in the house. The winner was Antonio Banderas, who was between performances of A Chorus Line, in his new theater. In a moving speech he said "Almodóvar is a miracle that happened to me" -- they met 40 whole years ago. The EFAs then handed Almodóvar the statue to take back to Banderas when he returned to Spain.
SCREENPLAY Celine Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
In something of a surprise, given that the film missed a Best Film nomination, Sciamma took screenplay. We haven't written much about the film (which is playing its Qualifying Week of release even as we speak in NY and LA) but trust that its screenplay is one of its greatest achievements. It's so clever but not in a self conscious way. GO SEE IT.
COSTUME DESIGN The Favourite
CINEMATOGRAPHY The Favourite
HAIR & MAKEUP The Favourite
EDITING The Favourite
PRODUCTION DESIGN Pain and Glory
The clip reel accompanying Pain & Glory's win was all about the cave home of the flashback sequences. That was quite a set. But I'll admit the win surprised me since the other main set (in the present tense) is actually Almodóvar's real home!
SCORE System Crasher
SHORT FILM The Christmas Gift
ANIMATED FEATURE Bunuel and Labyrinth of the Turtles
DOCUMENTARY For Sama
CO-PRODUCTION AWARD Ankica Juric Tilic
DISCOVERY Les Miserables
Ladj Ly said his English was terrible and quickly moved to French for his acceptance speech. Why didn't more people do this rather than struggle through English?
SPECIAL AWARD Babylon Berlin
This is the first time the European FILM Awards have honored television and curiously they gave this segment an endless amount of time.
ACHIEVEMENT IN EUROPEAN CINEMA Juliette Binoche
Binoche didn't write a thank you speech because she wanted to 'connect' to the audience. She spent most of her speech talking about the horrifying state of the world and what it means to be an artist. She recalled seeing a play when she was young and feeling so much joy because of the performersand wanting to provide that for other people. She certainly lived that dream!
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT Werner Herzog
Herzog's lifetime achievement award involved an entire operatic aria telling his story with lots of injokes to his film titles and a punchline that the aria never mentioned Klaus Kinski (because we wanted to). Herzog clearly enjoyed it. Wim Wenders presented the award and began his speech singing to! "Nothing Compares to You" by Sinead O'Connor.
If you didn't watch you'll have to take our word for it that the long absurd aria was one of the most sane things that happened on the stage. The hosts, Germany's Anna Brüggemann and Lithuania's Aistė Diržiūtė were a totally surreal pair, often doing ridiculous things like dressing in dinosaur costumes, speaking in perfect robotic unison while holding hands, or elaborating dancing / posing on the stage while presenting trophies and envelopes. It felt closer to tongue-in-cheek performance art than awards show hosting. At first it seemed terrible but by the end we chose to totally admire their fierce committment to their choices.
PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD Cold War
Pawel Pawlikowski was humble and self-deprecating thanking everyone who promoted the film and admitting that audiences had mostly avoided his work up until now. Haha.
Do you like the choices of the winners?