European Film Academy (EFA)

If you like street realism, you’ll love 2720, a tangible docu-fiction set in a disadvantaged Lisbon district. There, you’ll encounter 7-year-old Camila, who is desperately searching for her brother after a violent police raid, and Jyzone, an ex-convict attempting to start over.

In Clamor, which takes place in the south of France, we meet Gabin and Johannes, who are madly in love. If only they weren’t cousins! Without embellishments, the film depicts their complicated, taboo relationship.

In The Exploding Girl Candice keeps getting blown up on a daily basis. So much so that it becomes a metaphor for the younger generation’s overload, anxiety, and need for understanding. All of this is wrapped up in an animated absurdity, which seems so foreign yet so familiar.

When Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton in Wander to Wonder continue filming the children’s TV series after its creator’s death, the result is a tragic animated puppet dystopia. The puppets—blindly devoted to their audience, which most likely no longer exists—persevere in the empty studio, where rationality fails and a miserable routine remains.

The loudest film of this selection, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, is a recreation of a real-life event from 1993 in which one out of 500 train passengers was courageous enough to challenge the system. It is a film about witnesses and about what (not) to do when violence becomes a nearby event rather than a distant piece of news.

The European Film Awards programme is a panorama of cracks in a society, in individuals, and between reality and fiction. Sometimes light leaks through, sometimes only smoke. Each film in this programme is unique, yet together they all present the pulse of the continent that contemplates violence, difference, and vulnerability. If there is one thing that unifies these nominees, it is the belief in the power of cinematic expression (animated, documentary, or fictive) to see what we miss and say what we dare not say.

Lina Horvat