Titles include films by Sergei Loznitsa and Barbet Schroeder.

The Venerable W.

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The European Film Academy has unveiled the 15 documentaries that have been recommended for nomination for the 2017 European Film Awards.

They include Austerlitz from Palme d’Or nominated director Sergei Loznitsa, which premiered at Venice; Sonia Kronlund’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title Nothingwood; and Barbet Schroeder’s The Venerable W, which played out of competition at Cannes. 

Also nominated is Ziad Kalthoum Taste Of Cement, winner of the Best Feature-Length Film in the international competition at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, and Andreas Dalsgaard & Obaidah Zytoon’s The War Show, which won best film in the Venice Days section at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

EFA Members will now vote for five documentary nominations ahead of an awards ceremony on December 9 in Berlin, Germany.

Ten documentary festivals each put forward one film, which received its world premiere at the respective festival’s latest edition.  The festivals included IDFA (Netherlands), CPH:DOX (Denmark), Visions du Réel (Switzerland), DokLeipzig (Germany), Docslisboa (Portugal), Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Greece), Jihlava (Czech Republic), Cinéma du Réel (France), Krakow Film Festival (Poland) and Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK)

The committee that selected the films included EFA board members Roberto Cicutto, Vanessa Henneman and Marek Rozenbaum, commissioning editor Sari Volanen (YLE) and documentary expert Paul Pauwels (European Documentary Network).

EFA DOCUMENTARY SELECTION 2017

  • Austerlitz (Germany), Sergei Loznitsa
  • Communion (Poland), Anna Zamecka
  • Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas (Sweden, Germany, Finland), Joakim Demmer
  • How To Meet A Mermaid (Netherlands, Denmark), Coco Schrijber
  • La Chana (Spain, Iceland, Usa), Lucija Stojevic
  • Libera Nos (Italy, France Federica), Di Giacomo
  • Nothingwood (France, Germany Sonia ), Kronlund
  • School Life (Ireland, Spain), Neasa Ní Chianáin & David Rane
  • Stranger In Paradise (Netherlands), Guido Hendrikx
  • Taste Of Cement (Germany, Lebanon, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Qatar), Ziad Kalthoum
  • The Good Postman (Finland, Bulgaria), Tonislav Hristov
  • The Venerable W (France, Switzerland), Barbet Schroeder 
  • The War Show (Denmark, Syria, Finland), Andreas Dalsgaard & Obaidah Zytoon
  • Ultra (Hungary, Greece), Balazs Simonyi
  • West Of The Jordan River (France), Amos Gitai 

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