European Film Awards 2006 Winners
December 2nd, 2006 by Andre Soares
The European Film Academy, whose awards ceremony was held this evening in Warsaw, has opted for conventionality by giving the Best European Film Award to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others, a Cold War spy-thriller-cum-melodrama lacking both thrills and drama. "It means a lot to me to get this award here," von Donnersmarck explained, "since my father was born in this country."
Das Leben der Anderen became the third German film in the last four years to win the top European Film Award, following Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin! in 2003 and Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand / Head-On the following year.
Das Leben der Anderen star Ulrich Mühe, the one saving grace in the film, received the Best European Actor Award. Mühe, a renowned stage actor who was himself spied on by East Germany’s fearsome state police, the Stasi, plays a Stasi spy who, while eavesdropping on a playwright in the mid-1980s, begins to question his personal ethics and his allegiance to the Communist Party.
Pedro Almodóvar’s funny and touching Volver, a rare example of intelligent and creative filmmaking, won four European Academy awards: Best European Director, Best European Actress for Penélope Cruz, Best European Cinematographer for José Luis Alcaine (tied with Barry Ackroyd for Ken Loach’s Irish guerrilla drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley), and Best European Composer for Alberto Iglesias, whose marvelous score sounds like the offspring of Bernard Herrmann’s and Max Steiner’s music.
Additionally, Volver took the People’s Choice Award for Best Film.
Upon accepting his Best European Director trophy, Almodóvar declared, "It was a very important experience for me to go back to the tiny place where I was born. I dedicate this award to the wonderful actresses who represented the women who surrounded me when I was a child." (Volver’s female cast won an ensemble Best Actress Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Almodóvar received the Best Screenplay Award.)
Fighting back tears, Best European Actress winner Penélope Cruz said to her director. "Thank you so much for giving me the chance to play this part. You have changed my career and my life."
Cruz, outstanding as Volver’s sensual and vulnerable latter-day Anna Magnani, trying to cope with the ghosts of the past and a "ghost" in the present, is one of the two leading candidates for the 2006 Best Actress Academy Award. (The other one is Helen Mirren, for The Queen.)
Georgian filmmaker Gela Babluani’s well-crafted but exploitative 13 (Tzameti) won the European Discovery Award.
Philip Gröning’s Die Grosse Stille / Into Great Silence, about life inside the Grande Chartreuse, the head monastery of the reclusive Carthusian Order in France, had been previously announced as the Best Documentary winner.
Philippe Garrel’s Les Amants réguliers / Regular Lovers, a Nouvelle Vague-ish look into the life of a Parisian student and revolutionary (played by the director’s son, Louis Garrel), won the FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) Award.
Previous years’ "technical" categories were condensed into one award for "artistic contribution," given to Pierre Pell and Stéphane Rozenbaum for the production design in Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep.
No Best Non-European Film Award was given out this year. (Last year’s Prix Screen International winner was George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck.)
The European Achievement in World Cinema 2006 Award was given to British producer Jeremy Thomas, whose latest films include Fast Food Nation and Tideland, while French-born, Polish-raised filmmaker and actor Roman Polanski received the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. (I’m assuming it was no coincidence that Polanski was chosen to receive that honor in the year the European Film Academy held their awards ceremony in Poland, the first such event to take place in a country from the former Soviet Bloc.)
"It’s a moving moment for me to receive this award, particularly in Warsaw," Polanski said. "Only good things happen to me in this city."
Quotes via Reuters / Adelaide Now.
Full list of winners and nominees at the 2006 European Film Awards
European Film Awards 2006 - Entries
European Film Awards 2006 - Article
Lifetime Achievement Award for Roman Polanski
Lou Ye’s SUMMER PALACE Controversy in Belgrade
Sundance Film Festival 2007 - World Cinema Competition: Dramatic
Sundance Film Festival 2007 - World Cinema Competition: Documentary
Sundance Film Festival 2007 - Independent Film Competition: Narrative
One Response to “European Film Awards 2006 Winners”
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I am so glad Ms. Cruz won that much deserved award, I think she’s matured and has a lot of potential as an actress, “Volver” was a very interesting and passionate movie. I haven’t seen the german movie “The Life Of Others”, I hope it shows up the movie theathers of my Florida community, they sure need more foreign movies around here. Great site btw!