Lorna's Silence by the Belgian director brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne has won the European Parliament's Lux Cinema Prize.

The Prize was first introduced in 2007 with the aim to promote European culture and languages, and to foster the circulation of European films within the EU.

'The European Parliament has always recognised the pivotal role culture plays in our society and the award of the second LUX Prize reflects this', said the Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering in awarding the prize.

The Cannes script award winner, Lorna's Silence, tells a story of an Albanian woman entering into a fake marriage in order to attain Belgian citizenship, and suffering a series of unfortunate events as a result.

The prize will cover the costs to subtitle the winning film in all of the 23 EU languages. Also, one copy of the film per member state will be produced in 35mm format.

Luc Dardenne said, 'We don't see enough of each other's films in different countries of the European Union. I think this prize is the first step in remedying this problem.'

Last years winner was Fatih Akin's acclaimed Turkish-German co-production The Edge Of Heaven.

This year's runners-up included Delta by the Hungarian director Kornel Mundrucko and the Czech entry Obcan Havel by Miroslav Janek and Pavel Koutecky.