Mumbai, Dec 12 (IANS) The 34th European Film Awards (EFAs), which were held virtually from Berlin, honoured and celebrated excellence in European cinema.
The Saturday night ceremony was hosted by German actress and writer Annabelle Mandeng from Arena Berlin studio where the nominees and winners joined via video link.
Bosnian filmmaker, Jasmila Zbanic's film 'Quo Vadis, Aida?' which follows the events upto the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, has emerged as the biggest winner at the prestigious awards with top three awards to its credit: European Film 2021, Best Director honour for Žbanic and European actress honour for Jasna Duricic for her performance as a Bosnian translator.
Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated documentary, 'Flee' also also won three awards including the Best European Animated Film, Best Documentary and the European University Film Award.
Close on the heels of the award count of both 'Quo Vadis, Aida?' and 'Flee', 'The Father' emerged as the third highest winner as Sir Anthony Hopkins bagged the European Actor prize for his performance as a man with dementia in Florian Zeller's psychological drama, for which the actor also won an Oscar earlier, this year.
Zeller too shared the honours for best European screenplay for the film with co-writer Christopher Hampton.
The technical categories saw winners from Austrian drama 'Great Freedom', for best cinematography awarded to Crystel Fournier which also bagged the Best original score for Nils Petter Molvær and Peter Brötzmann.
Michael O'Connor won the best costume design for British period drama 'Ammonite'. Peter Hjorth and Fredrik Nord walked away with the visual effects prize for 'Lamb'. Flore Masson, Olivier Afonso and Antoine Mancini clinched the award for best make-up and hair for their work in Julia Ducournau directorial 'Titane'.
While Mukharam Kabulova was conferred with Best Editing honors for 'Unclenching the Fists', Best Production Design went to Márton Ágh for Hungarian feature 'Natural Light'. Best Sound Design was awarded to Gisle Tveito and Gustaf Berger for their work in the Norwegian feature 'The Innocents'.
The EFAs also announced the nominees for the newly-configured LUX Audience Award. The award, which was launched in September 2020 by the European Parliament and the European Film Academy, in partnership with the European Commission and Europa Cinemas will be awarded to one of the three nominated films, 'Flee', 'Great Freedom' and 'Quo Vadis, Aida?'.
All three films will be subtitled in all the 24 EU languages for the purpose of accessibility to a wide set of audience. The award will be given out on the basis of audience votes from a period of mid-December to May 25, 2022. The winner will be announced in a ceremony in the European Parliament on June 8, 2022.