European cinema is enjoying a moment of attention that owes nothing to merchandising or franchise planning. While much of Hollywood remains tied to sequels, superheroes and formulaic horror, some of the year’s most vital films have come from Europe — adult, politically engaged works that demand ambiguity, moral unease and time for reflection rather than offering easy comfort.
That mood is visible at this year’s European Film Awards in Berlin on January 17. The EFA nominees — from France, Germany, Spain, Scandinavia and beyond — share a seriousness and formal daring increasingly rare in mainstream US cinema. Many are unsettling, overtly political and artistically ambitious, and several have broken into wider awards-season conversations, including the Oscars.
Jafar Panahi’s urgent political thriller It Was Just an Accident is a leading contender. Blending dark comedy, satire and Hitchcockian suspense, the Iranian-French drama follows Vahid, a former political prisoner who believes he has identified his torturer. He kidnaps the suspected man, takes him to the desert to bury him alive — but having been blindfolded in prison, Vahid cannot be certain he has the right person. He drives through the city with the bound captive in his van, picking up other ex-prisoners to argue over revenge or mercy. Grimly funny and increasingly unnerving, the film was made after Panahi served seven months behind bars for “anti-government propaganda.” It reads as a furious, playful indictment of authoritarianism, and feels particularly urgent amid escalating protests and state violence in Iran. Panahi has since been sentenced in absentia to another year in prison and a two-year ban on working; he has said he intends to return to Iran after the film’s awards run.
Oliver Laxe’s Sirat is stranger and more elemental. Starting as a search for a father’s missing daughter amid Morocco’s underground rave scene, the film shifts into a larger, unspecified global catastrophe — perhaps a world war — as military forces arrive and a group of ravers and a father and son flee across the desert in camper vans. The result is a hybrid: part post-apocalyptic chase, part existential thriller, driven by a relentless techno score. Sirat evokes The Wages of Fear and Mad Max: Fury Road filtered through a spiritual, psychedelic lens.
Other EFA entries work in quieter, more intimate registers. Joachim Trier’s Norwegian drama Sentimental Value centers on Gustav Borg, a once-celebrated director in personal and creative crisis who tries to reconnect with his estranged adult daughter by writing a film for her. When she refuses, he contemplates recasting the part with an American star and rewriting the project in English. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, the film flirts with industry satire and recalls Bergman and Fellini, but its core is raw and personal: an exploration of how art can vocalize what people cannot say to one another.
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling takes a broader historical sweep. Set on a rural German farm, the film follows four generations of women across a century, focusing on lives often overlooked by official histories. Visually austere and thematically resonant, it recalls Michael Haneke’s rigor and Edgar Reitz’s generational storytelling while carving out new ground by centering women’s experiences.
Across the lineup, many films foreground politics. Petra Volpe’s Swiss drama Late Shift transforms the care crisis into a single-night ordeal for a nurse. Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab confronts the true-life killing of a young girl in Gaza, refusing abstraction or distance. Even Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia uses conspiracy and paranoia for social satire rather than mere escapism. Two hand-drawn French animations, Arco and Little Amelie or the Character of Rain, have also attracted Academy attention.
What feels different this year is how far these European films are reaching beyond the continent. It Was Just an Accident, Sirat and Sentimental Value are all being talked about as serious Oscar contenders — not only in the international feature race but for directing and even best picture. Once written off as too austere, political or niche, European cinema is again shaping global conversations. As Hollywood leans on franchises and recycled formulas, audiences seeking meaning rather than spectacle are looking elsewhere.
DW, The Hollywood Reporter and the European Film Academy are hosting a live roundtable with directors Jafar Panahi, Oliver Laxe, Mascha Schilinski and Joachim Trier on Friday, January 16 at 3:45 pm CET, streaming on DW’s History and Culture channel on YouTube.
Edited by: Tanya Ott