2004 European Film Awards Winners
The German drama Gegen die Wand / Head-On was picked as the best European film at the 2004 European Film Awards ceremony in Barcelona.
Directed by Fatih Akin, voted the year’s best European director, Head-On tells the story of a young Turkish-German woman (Sibel Kekilli) who marries an older Turkish man (Birol Ünel) in order to escape her strict Muslim family. Earlier this year, Head-On won both the Golden Bear and the International Critics’ FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
Additionally, the film has won five German Film Academy awards: Best film, best actor, best actress, best director, and best cinematography (Rainer Klausmann).
Spaniard Javier Bardem (above, with Belén Rueda) was chosen the year’s best actor for his performance as a tetraplegic fighting for the right to die in Alejandro Amenábar’s Mar adentro / The Sea Inside, while Vera Drake, Mike Leigh’s drama about a part-time abortionist in 1950s England, earned Imelda Staunton the best actress award.
Other winners included best non-European film 2046 (above), Wong Kar Wai’s tale about the romantic adventures of a writer, starring Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li, and several other major Chinese stars; Norwegian actress-director Liv Ullmann, who won the European achievement in world cinema prize — and who also happened to receive the longest standing ovation of the evening; and Spanish director Carlos Saura, who took home the Lifetime Achievement Award.
"It’s important that we celebrate what is being done in film over here," said Spanish actress Penélope Cruz, winner of the Jameson People’s Choice best actress award for her role as a destitute woman who has an affair with a physician in actor-director-writer Sergio Castellitto’s Italian drama Non ti muovere / Don’t Move (right).
The evening’s biggest loser was another Spaniard, Pedro Almodóvar, whose outstanding La Mala educación / Bad Education garnered seven nominations but no wins. This unusual dramatic comedy stars Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez as two men caught between the present and their traumatic past.
The awards were presented by the European Film Academy (EFA), whose current president is German director Wim Wenders. The EFA is composed of 1,600 film industry professionals from all over Europe.
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Tags: Belen Rueda, Birol Unel, European Film Academy, European Film Awards, Fatih Akin, Film Awards, Gegen die Wand, Head-On, Imelda Staunton, Javier Bardem, Liv Ullmann, Sibel Kekilli, The Sea Inside
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