2016 European Film Awards in Wrocław
Grażyna Torbicka, Jerzy Kapuściński, Agnieszka Odorowicz, Krzysztof Zanussi, Rafał Dutkiewicz, Marion Döring, Zbigniew Preisner, Volker Hassemer, Roman Gutek, Photo by UM Wrocław
Wrocław will host the 2016 European Film Awards ceremony. The event will be organized within the framework of Wrocław’s European Capital of Culture celebrations.
On April 1, a press conference was held at Wrocław’s City Hall to announce that the 2016 European Film Awards ceremony will be held in Wrocław. The press conference participants included Marion Döring – head of the European Film Academy, Rafał Dutkiewicz – mayor of Wrocław, Agnieszka Odorowicz- general director of the Polish Film Institute, Krzysztof Zanussi – member of the EFA board, and Roman Gutek, curator of the European Capital of Culture Film Programme.
The news comes on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the European Film Academy, launched in Berlin on April 1, 1989. To celebrate this anniversary, Wrocław’s Nowe Horyzonty cinema prepared a special programme. Audiences will have an opportunity to see unique footage, including a recording of the first awards ceremony in 1988, during which Krzysztof Kieślowski said “I hope that Poland is also a part of Europe.”
European Film Awards
The most prestigious awards for European films, awarded by the European Film Academy, were at first called the Felix awards. In 1997, they were renamed the European Film Awards and sometimes referred to as the ‘European Oscars.’ Every other year (odd years), the awards ceremony is held in Berlin, while in alternate (even) years, the ceremony venue rotates among major European cities. The European Film Awards ceremony has had one previous edition in Poland; in 2006, the EFA awards ceremony was held in Warsaw. This year’s ceremony will take place on December 13 in Riga.
Awards for Polish Filmmakers
The first edition of the awards brought a win for Krzysztof Kieślowski, who received the Best Film award for his Krótki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing). In 2010, the Grand Prize went to Roman Polański’s Ghost Writer, while Polański himself received the awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay.
Two Polish filmmakers have also received the European Film Academy’s lifetime achievement award: Andrzej Wajda in 1990 and Roman Polański in 2006. The European Film Academy has also awarded our cinematographers and documentary filmmakers. Polish filmmakers have received a total of nine nominations in the Best European Short Film category, with awards for Marcel Łoziński’s Poste Restante in 2009 and Katarzyna Klimkiewicz’s Hanoi-Warszawa (Hanoi-Warsaw) in 2010. At last year’s edition of the European Film Awards, the award for Best European Animated Film went to Ari Folman’s The Congress.
The European Film Academy
The European Film Academy is an initiative of European filmmakers, currently with approximately 3,000 members. In addition to the annual ‘European Oscars,’ the Academy participates in activities that promote European filmmaking, and organizes workshops and training sessions that serve as a platform for networking within the industry.
At the beginning of 2014, Agnieszka Holland took on the position of chairwoman of the board of the European Film Academy. Krzysztof Zanussi is one of 19 members of the EFA board.
Kalina Cybulska