What movie is going to dominate the 2009 European Film Awards, to be held tonight in Bochum, in Germany's Rhein-Ruhr region?
Well, three films will be battling it out for both the best picture and the best director awards: Jacques Audiard's French prison drama A Prophet, Michael Haneke's Austrian-German psycho-political drama The White Ribbon (above), and Danny Boyle's Anglo-American-Indian Bollywoodish Slumdog Millionaire. All three have already won major awards elsewhere: the first two at Cannes; the third title in Hollywood and Britain.
Will the three favorites end up splitting the vote so that a dark horse will come out victorious? Nope. In those types of races, simplistic theories about dark horses winning because favorites split the vote are both bad math and bad logic. If voters saw all six movies (or any combination of the six) every movie in the running will "split" votes. And if Stephen Daldry's The Reader, Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, or Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank take home the best picture/best director awards that will mean only one thing: the winner, whichever movie it is, was no dark horse to begin with.
Anyhow, I'd say that of the three favorites — ahem — of the three most publicized titles, Slumdog Millionaire (above) is the one with less of a chance simply because by now it's almost yesteryear news. On the other hand, both The White Ribbon and A Prophet have been submitted for Academy Award consideration in the best foreign language film category, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if The White Ribbon garners Oscar nominations in the best picture, best director, and best original screenplay categories. In other words, those two dramas are very much of the here and now.
The best European first feature race remains a mystery, though Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani's Ajami (above) has been widely praised at the Toronto Film Festival and elsewhere, and has already won the Israeli Academy's best picture award. It's also Israel's submission for the best foreign language film Oscar. (True, Agnès Varda's The Beaches of Agnès is one of the semi-finalists for this year's best documentary feature Oscar, but it was announced a few weeks ago that Peter Liechti's The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy was the European Film Award winner. But remember: a small jury panel picked the year's best documentary; a much larger body — something that generally leads to well-known, well-regarded, "safe" winners — will be voting for the best first feature.)