The European Movie Awards (EFA) shifted its common December date to January this yr to extra intently align with an more and more international-leaning awards season. Whereas these winners won’t impression the Oscar nominations, as Academy voting closed on January 16, the January 17 awards ceremony might affect Oscar voters in selecting their winners in March.
Europe’s equal to the Oscars handed out prizes on Saturday in Berlin, with a number of nominees and winners overlapping with what are anticipated to be 2026 Oscar nominees: “Bugonia,” “Sentimental Worth,” “It Was Simply an Accident,” and “Bugonia” amongst them. Final yr’s large winner, “Emilia Pérez,” emerged triumphant on the EFAs in December 2024 earlier than star Karla Sofía Gascón’s previous Twitter habits surfaced the next month, tanking the film’s possibilities at successful vital Academy Awards.
Of those titles, “It Was Simply an Accident” — a co-production of Iran, France, and Luxembourg — was the one one to go dwelling empty-handed.
“Sentimental Worth” triumphed with awards for greatest movie, director Joachim Trier, actors Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård, and screenwriters Trier and Eskil Vogt. The Neon title ought to count on to obtain a Finest Image Academy Award nomination in addition to nods for these actors.
The Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences has practically twice the variety of voters because the European Movie Academy, although there’s overlap between the voting teams that would assist inform the place the Oscars land. (See IndieWire awards pundit Anne Thompson’s Oscar nominations predictions right here; these drop on January 22.)
The present was “hosted” by documentary filmmaker and film historian Mark Cousins (“The Story of Movie”). He labored with movie composer Dascha Dauenhauer and stage director Robert Lehniger to curate a European Movie Awards presentation that lacked a standard emcee, filling the present with varied flashbacks to beloved European movies from “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” to “Playtime.” “It Was Simply an Accident” director Jafar Panahi, who’s quickly dealing with yet one more jail sentence in Iran, opened the ceremony with a political plea to acknowledge the oppression and killing of protesters occurring in his dwelling nation.
“When the reality is crushed in a single place, freedom suffocates in every single place,” he stated, as Selection reported. “Then nobody is secure wherever on the earth. Not in Iran. Not in Europe. Not in America. Not wherever on this planet. And that’s exactly why at the moment our activity as filmmakers and artists is tougher than ever. If we’re disenchanted with politicians, we should at the very least refuse to stay silent. As a result of silence in a time of crime is just not neutrality. Silence is a participation in darkness.”
Cousins additionally got here onstage to award a European achievement in world cinema prize to Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (“La Chimera,” “Pleased as Lazzaro”).
Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, longtime star of Ingmar Bergman’s movies and a former associate of the director, obtained the European Movie Awards’ equal of a lifetime achievement award. Referencing how Venezuelan opposition chief María Corina Machado gifted her Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Donald Trump, Ullmann stated, “We now have legal guidelines that say that if you happen to misuse the Nobel Prize, we take it away from you. Someone in energy in america could also be disenchanted. He’ll lose it… I’m blissful.” (The prize is awarded by Norway.)
Oliver Laxe’s “Sirāt” took dwelling 5 European Movie Awards; the Spanish-language rescue odyssey, set all through the desert of Morocco, is Spain’s submission for the Academy Awards. It additionally obtained 5 nods on the Oscars shortlist throughout worldwide characteristic and below-the-line classes. Laxe’s movie is wanting sturdy up towards different fellow Neon-released motion pictures: “Sentimental Worth,” “No Different Selection,” “The Secret Agent,” and “It Was Simply an Accident.”
All of the 2026 European Movie Awards winners are beneath.
European Movie
“Sentimental Worth”
European Cinematographer
Mauro Herce for “Sirāt”
European Director
Joachim Trier for “Sentimental Worth”
European Composer
Hania Rani for “Sentimental Worth”
European Documentary
“Fiume o Morte!,” dir. Igor Bezinović
European Casting Director
Nadia Acimi, Luís Bértolo, and María Rodrigo for “Sirāt”
European Screenwriter
Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier for “Sentimental Worth”
European Editor
Cristóbal Fernández for “Sirāt”
European Sound Designer
Laia Casanovas, Amanda Villavieja, and Yasmina Praderas for “Sirāt”
European Make-up and Hair Artist
Torsten Witte for “Bugonia”
European Actress
Renate Reinsve for “Sentimental Worth”
European Actor
Stellan Skarsgård for “Sentimental Worth”
European Animated Characteristic Movie
“Arco” (France)
Directed by Ugo Bienvenu
European Manufacturing Designer
Laia Ateca for “Sirāt”
European Costume Designer
Sabrina Krämer for “Sound Of Falling”
European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI
“On Falling” (United Kingdom, Portugal)
Directed by Laura Carreira
European Younger Viewers Award
“Siblings” (Italy)
Directed by Greta Scarano
European Brief Movie – Prix Vimeo
“Metropolis of Poets”
Directed by John Smith
