Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, arguably the most unabashedly European film of the past year, swept the 38th European Film Awards in Berlin on January 17. The Norwegian melodrama won the so-called “big five”: best film, best director for Trier, both acting awards for Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve, best screenplay and best score.
Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, an aging, once-celebrated film director who left his wife and two children in pursuit of artistic glory. Returning home, he tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter Nora (Reinsve), now a famous actress. Gustav has an ulterior motive: he’s written a script for Nora — a part based on his own mother, who killed herself when he was a child — and hopes her fame will help secure financing. Nora is severely depressed and has never forgiven him. Both are artists who believe cinema might bridge their distance; no spoilers, except that it doesn’t go as planned.
Critics have placed Trier’s film in the lineage of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. Visually the movie is a history lesson: flashbacks tracing the Borg family use distinct cinematic textures — hand-cranked black-and-white 16mm for the 1920s, the handheld jitter of New Hollywood for the 1970s, and a lush painterly gloss for the 1990s. The result feels quintessentially European: inward-looking, formally adventurous, and rooted in continental film history rather than studio formulas.
The European Film Academy’s 5,400 members embraced the film’s technical and artistic command. By backing Sentimental Value so thoroughly, the Academy also aims to boost the film’s profile during awards season. Moving the EFAs from their traditional December slot to January — squarely inside awards season, between the Golden Globes and the Oscars — is intended to amplify buzz for European contenders.
Sentimental Value already figures as an Oscar frontrunner. A best international feature nomination appears likely; acting nominations for Skarsgård and Reinsve are widely predicted (Skarsgård has already won a Golden Globe); a best picture nomination is also possible. By anointing Trier’s film ahead of the Oscars, the European Film Academy positions itself to claim influence should the film succeed at the Academy Awards.
Still, the night also left some feeling that the EFAs missed a chance to showcase the full range of European cinema. That breadth was at least partly recognized in the crafts categories: Oliver Laxe’s Sirat — Spain’s Oscar contender — took five technical trophies, including cinematography, editing, production design, sound and casting. Sirat is a genre-defying, surreal road movie that begins at an underground rave in the Moroccan desert. A father and son arrive searching for a missing daughter/sister; the military appears, and the film pivots into dystopia amid hints of a new world war or environmental collapse. The protagonists join a nomadic group of ravers on a journey across wastelands as Laxe repeatedly shifts tone and genre, steering the film into unexpected territory.
Another notable omission from the winners’ list was Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident. Panahi’s first film since his release from prison in 2022, it’s a taut moral thriller set in contemporary Tehran. A former political prisoner, now working as a car mechanic, believes he recognizes his torturer — identified by a squeaky prosthetic leg — and kidnaps him to bury him alive. Having been blindfolded in prison, he’s unsure he has the right man and drives through the city, gathering other former prisoners to decide between revenge and mercy. The film’s suspenseful premise and tonal control have drawn comparisons to Hitchcock.
Panahi did not win at the EFAs, but he used his time on stage to speak out. Ahead of the ceremony he read a statement condemning the brutal crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran, which recent reports say has left thousands dead and many more arrested. He urged the world not to stay silent: “When the truth is crushed in one place, freedom suffocates everywhere,” he said, calling for international attention and action.
The EFAs also staged a roundtable discussion — featuring nominees including Trier, Panahi, Laxe and Mascha Schilinski — about European cinema’s risk-taking approach, underscoring the continent’s continued appetite for formally daring, politically engaged films. Edited by Elizabeth Grenier.