Ahead of the European Film Awards ceremony in Berlin on January 17, award-winning filmmakers Jafar Panahi, Oliver Laxe, Mascha Schilinski and Joachim Trier will take part in a live discussion hosted by DW, The Hollywood Reporter and the European Film Academy on January 16 at 3:45 p.m. CET. Watch the discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_8VuEWoa4
European cinema is having a moment — and it’s not a nostalgic one. While much of the global industry leans on franchises, algorithms and intellectual property, Europe’s most vital filmmakers are moving the other way: toward risk, politics, intimacy and formal freedom.
“European Cinema on the Edge” spotlights that moment in a roundtable with four of the year’s most talked-about directors: Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), Mascha Schilinski (Sound of Falling), Oliver Laxe (Sirat) and Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value).
All four are European Film Award nominees and Oscar contenders, and each has made work that sits — aesthetically, politically and emotionally — on the edge. From Panahi’s clandestine filmmaking under Iran’s authoritarian regime to Laxe’s genre-defying desert odyssey, from Schilinski’s generational reckoning with German history to Trier’s Bergman-inflected meditation on art, family and compromise, the conversation goes beyond awards buzz to the larger questions shaping cinema today.
Is making films still a political act? Who are these movies really for? What happens to European cinema as streaming power, right-wing populism and artificial intelligence reshape the cultural landscape? This is “European Cinema on the Edge,” a collaboration between DW, The Hollywood Reporter and the European Film Academy — a conversation about what cinema can be when it refuses to play it safe.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier