Fatherland leads the European Film Awards nominations with 11, ahead of La Bola Negra

The European Film Academy named the nominees in 16 more categories of the 39th European Film Awards on Saturday, November 14, in front of an audience at the Pavlos Zannas Theatre in Thessaloniki’s Olympion building, as part of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland received the most nominations, 11. La Bola Negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, followed with 10, and Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord with five. The winners will be announced on January 16, 2027, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, at a ceremony the Academy organizes with the Hellenic Film and Audiovisual Center, EKKOMED.

Our guide of November 10 set out the season’s dates before the announcement. What is new is the list of nominees. The Academy says they are based on the votes of its 5,700 members, who have been watching the 68 features it shortlisted on October 14.

The five fiction films nominated for European Film

European Film has 15 nominees in all, because the five films nominated for European Documentary and the five for European Animation Film also compete for it. The Academy says the 15 represent 19 European countries and that six of them, 40 percent, were directed or co-directed by women.

Directing and acting

The European Director nominees are Calvo and Ambrossi for La Bola Negra, Mungiu for Fjord, Pawlikowski for Fatherland, Sandra Wollner for Everytime and Andrey Zvyagintsev for Minotaur. The same five films make up the European Screenwriter category.

The European Actress list has six entries, and two are for Sandra Hüller: one for Fatherland and one for Rose, Markus Schleinzer’s film, for which the Berlinale’s international jury gave her the Silver Bear for best leading performance in February. The others are Mathilde Arcel for Woman Unknown, Penélope Cruz for Bunker, Renate Reinsve for Fjord and Léa Seydoux for Gentle Monster. The European Actor nominees are Swann Arlaud for A Man of His Time, Javier Bardem for The Beloved, Andrew Scott for Elsinore, Sebastian Stan for Fjord and Hanns Zischler for Fatherland.

Documentaries, animation and first features

The European Documentary nominees are Letters from the Silenced Country (Listy) by Andrei Kutsila, NAZA by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, Rehearsals for a Revolution by Pegah Ahangarani, To Hold a Mountain (Planina) by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, and Whispers in the Woods (Le chant des forêts) by Vincent Munier. By our comparison, three of them, NAZA, Rehearsals for a Revolution and To Hold a Mountain, are among the seven films Cinema Eye Honors nominated this week for its Outstanding Nonfiction Feature award. Rehearsals for a Revolution and To Hold a Mountain are also on the International Documentary Association’s 16-film shortlist, from which the IDA names its nominees on November 17.

All five animated nominees list France among their production countries, by our reading of the Academy’s list: In Waves, Iron Boy (Le corset), Jim Queen, Lucy Lost and Viva Carmen (Carmen, l’oiseau rebelle). The European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI, for a director’s first full-length fiction film, is chosen by a committee of FIPRESCI members and experts named by the Academy’s board rather than by a members’ vote. Its six nominees are 17, At Night, Cute, Flesh & Fuel, The Guest and Thirteen in Gaza.

Where the two leaders score in the crafts

By our count from the list, Fatherland’s 11 nominations are made up of five in the main categories (film, director, screenwriter, actress and actor) and six in the crafts: casting, cinematography, editing, make-up and hair, production design and sound. La Bola Negra has the same six craft nominations plus costume design. Other craft nominees include Coward, for cinematography and make-up and hair; Rose, for score, costumes and production design; and Yellow Letters, İlker Çatak’s winner of the Berlinale’s Golden Bear in February, for Gesa Jäger’s editing. Our guide to the Berlinale prizes has more on that festival.

What comes next

The European Short Film nominees were named a day earlier, on November 13, at the Seville European Film Festival: God Is Shy, L’Mina, Morning Circle, The End and Unleaded 95. The Academy says every short on its shortlist, the five nominees included, can be viewed on Festival Scope Pro, a platform for film professionals. The last nominations the Academy has scheduled are those for the LUX Audience Award, on November 25; our earlier guide lists the season’s other dates, including its first screenings in the United States.

The Academy says the January 16 ceremony will be streamed live on its website, europeanfilmawards.eu.