‘Sentimental Value’ sweeps European Film Awards

Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” probably the most spectacularly European film of the past year, has, quite appropriately, swept the 38th European Film Awards (EFA), held in Berlin on January 17. 

The quietly devastating Norwegian melodrama won the so-called “big five,” taking best film, best director for Trier, both best acting honors — for Stellan Skarsgard and Renate Reinsve, for playing an estranged father and daughter — as well best screenplay and best score.

Skarsgard plays Gustav Borg, an aging, once-great film director who left his wife and two children in pursuit of artistic glory. Returning home, he tries to reconnect. But he has an ulterior motive. His oldest daughter, Nora (Reinsve), is now a famous actress. He’s written a script for her and hopes her fame will help get the movie financed.

He based her character on his own mother, who committed suicide when he was a child. Nora herself is severely depressed.

Gustav and Nora barely talk — she’s never forgiven him for walking out on the family — but they are both artists. Gustav hopes art and cinema can help them connect. No spoilers except to say it doesn’t go as planned.

A love letter to European film history

Critics have compared the movie to the work of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. Put “Sentimental Value” on a shelf next to the films of those European masters, and it wouldn’t look out of place.

Visually, Trier evokes the history of cinema. Flashback scenes tracing the history of the Borg family are shot using old lenses and film stock; 16 mm, hand-cranked black-and-white footage for 1920s scenes gives way to the handheld jitters of New Hollywood for the 1970s before moving in later scenes to the lush painterly gloss of 90s prestige movies.

It’s easy to understand why the 5,400 members of the European Film Academy went mad for the movie. Trier’s film is superb on all levels; technically and artistically the work of a director in full control of his talents. And this movie feels “European” to its core. No one would mistake it for a Hollywood studio production. The work explores issues of European history and art, grounded in subtly emotional performances that leave space for interpretation and mystery.

A publicity boost ahead of Oscar season

By backing “Sentimental Value,” the European Film Awards also hope the film will play a bigger role in the international awards conversation.

Traditionally, the European awards have been held in December. Coming months after the Oscars, the EFAs felt like something of an afterthought. By shifting the event to January, smack in the middle of “awards season” (a week after the Golden Globes, a week before the Oscar nominations), the European Film Academy is looking to boost the buzz for its favored films.

“Sentimental Value” is already an Oscar frontrunner. A nomination for best international feature looks a lock. Many pundits are predicting acting nominations for Skarsgard and Reinsve (Skarsgard is running in the best supporting actor category, which he won at the Golden Globes). A best picture nomination is a strong possibility. By anointing its champion before the Oscars, the European Film Academy gets bragging rights should Trier go all the way.

So it makes perfect sense that the Academy picked “Sentimental Value.” But by going all in on Trier, they did miss an opportunity to recognize the full breadth and variety of European cinema from last year.

‘Sirat’: Oliver Laxe’s genre-bending desert odyssey

The Academy appeared to acknowledge this with its crafts wins, with five trophies — cinematography, editing, production, sound design and best casting — for “Sirat,” a mind-bending surreal road movie from Spanish director Oliver Laxe.

Spain’s Oscar contender, the film defies genre categories. It starts at an underground rave in the middle of the Moroccan desert. A father and son arrive, looking for their daughter/sister. Then the military show up. Something has happened — a new world war, an environmental collapse, we are never told — and “Sirat” takes a sharp turn into dystopian territory.

The father and his son join a group of raver nomads on a road trip through the wastelands. But Laxe isn’t through surprising us. “Sirat” takes several shocking twists, changing not just the story but the film’s genre conventions, to end in a place we could have never imagined.

Jafar Panahi, moral suspense and modern Tehran

The real missed opportunity on Saturday night was not giving anything to Iranian director Jafar Panahi for his masterpiece “It Was Just an Accident.” Panahi’s first film since being released from prison in 2022, for alleged “propaganda” against the Islamic regime, the film is a moral thriller set in modern-day Iran.

A former political prisoner, now a car mechanic, thinks he recognizes his torturer from prison. Seeking vengeance, he kidnaps him to bury him alive. But does he have the right man? He never saw his torturer, having spent his time in prison blindfolded. He thinks he recognizes him from his squeaky artificial leg. But he can’t be sure. So he stuffs him back in his van and drives around the city, picking up other former prisoners to help him decide whether to take revenge or show mercy.

It’s a plot worthy of Hitchcock. Panahi is a master of tone and “It Was Just an Accident” shifts effortlessly between suspense and satire, humor and horror.

Cinema meets protest as Panahi speaks out

Panahi’s autobiography — his story was inspired by his time in prison — and the current situation in Iran makes “It Was Just an Accident” painfully relevant. For the past two weeks, Tehran’s hardline government has been engaging in a  brutal crackdown of nationwide protests. At least 3,000 protesters are believed to have been killed and another 18,000 arrested.

Panahi didn’t win anything at the European Film Awards but he did give a speech. Taking the stage ahead of the ceremony, he read a statement decrying the violence in Iran and the regime, and called on the world to speak out against it.

“If the world does not respond to this blatant violence today, not only Iran but the entire world is at risk,” he said. “When the truth is crushed in one place, freedom suffocates everywhere… We must at least must refuse to remain silent because silence in a time of crime is not neutrality silence, silence is a participation in darkness.”

 

To find out more about European cinema’s risk-taking approach, watch an exclusive roundtable discussion with European Film Award director nominees Joachim Trier, Jafar Panahi, Oliver Laxe and Mascha Schilinski, a collaboration between DW, The Hollywood Reporter and The European Film Academy, here on the DW History and Culture YouTube channel. 

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier