European Film Awards

"I want to be surprised"

Continuing our series introducing the members of the Board of the European Film Academy, producer Dagmar Jacobsen from Germany talks about her experiences with the selection procedure and as a member of the Discovery committee for this year's European Film Awards.

The selection procedure for this year’s European Film Awards is now coming to an end. What is that, who is involved and how does it work?
Sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t! I’ll try to explain:
First, EFA Members are asked to choose one film out of a list of all national releases of the last year. They can also add films missing on that list and suggest films from other countries.

The second part takes place at a board meeting by the end of June. Since it’s impossible to know all the European movies – there are so many! – we invite experts who travel around festivals because they are film critics or select films for festivals. They suggest films which board members are now asked to watch themselves.

Next is a period of watching all those films to decide if they go on the selection list or not. I’ve already been quite busy watching! 
By the way: we can watch all those films on a VoD platform, which makes things really much easier. 

Maria von Hörsten co-ordinates all the different and very controversial votes in order to fix the final list of selected films. She has now finally closed this procedure. Congratulations! I’m under the impression that it was especially long and complicated this year, but maybe I’m wrong and it’s as it always is in a democratic process.

You are also part of the Discovery committee. Who else is on it?
The Discovery committee is composed of two board members – Ilann Girard and myself – EFA Members Paul Negoescu from Romania and José Luis Cienfuegos from Spain and film critics Krzysztof Kwiatkowski (Poland), Marco Spagnoli (Italy) and Neil Young (UK), the latter three members of FIPRESCI, the international association of film critics. 
We are seven altogether. 

How many films are submitted for this award and what’s the procedure?
We had a list of more than 60 films, which is really a lot. Therefore we split into three groups. Each group chooses about five films out of a list of 20, which the other groups then have to watch as well. I think in the end I shall have seen at least 40 films out of the 60 European First Films on our list. And most of them are very professionally produced and of high quality.
I discussed the 20 films on my list with the Polish film critic Krszysztof Kwiatkowski. We had two Skype conferences and chose our favourites by discussing each film, one by one. 
We talked a lot about the criteria for our decisions: What’s the subject and how did the filmmaker translate it into a cinematographic language? Does he or she try to find new ways of storytelling? Do we sense strong talent even if the film is not perfect?
Or: does the film keep me thinking about it or do I forget it very quickly? In other words: I have to be emotionally and/or intellectually seduced to vote for a film. I’m happy to discover new radical ways of producing a film. I want to be surprised, I want to discover something or someone. 

In the end we nominate five films.
I’m really happy to be in this committee because you get an impression of what the young generation of filmmakers is concerned about, how they try to find a cinematographic language for subjects they want to express, what trends or traditions in film history we can find there.  

Are there any trends you could observe?
I’m not sure yet, but my first impression is that there are a lot of sad, serious and quite dramatic subjects, like illness or depression, forms of self-destruction and suicide. Family problems seem to be important, but nowadays it’s the parents who need help from their children. Love is a subject as complicated as ever, maybe even more complex and impossible? 
And I‘m astonished to see that you can still identify national trends. Films from Spain are different from films from Denmark or Romania. In a way it’s good to see that it’s not one big “Europudding”. 
 
When’s the last time you went to a cinema and what did you see?
The last film I saw in theatre was FINDING VIVIAN MEYER, an American documentary by John Maloof. It’s not my favourite. I think I’d prefer to see an exhibition of her photos.
Now I’m stuck to my TV screen to watch European cinema. I hope I’ll have time to watch films in a real theatre before the end of the voting procedure for the EFA. I still prefer going out to see movies rather than watching them at home.