French director Cyril Dion’s feature documentary Animal has won the European Film Academy’s (EFA) Young Audience Award 2022.
The winner was revealed during an online award ceremony on Sunday evening in Erfurt, Germany, which was streamed live on the YAA website.
The Award honours European films for an audience between 12 and 14 years and has been an official category of EFA’s European Film Awards since 2012.
Animal tracks two teenagers who travel to meet with scientists and activists around the world, searching for another way of living alongside other species, as co-habitants rather than predators.
The documentary produced by Capa Studio and Bright Bright Bright and distributed by Orange Studio and UGC, premiered as a special screening in Cannes last year.
The winner was chosen by young juries from 42 European countries watching three nominated films online as well as in over 50 movie theatres throughout Europe.
The three nominated films were Animal as well as Sanna Lenken’s Comedy Queen from Sweden and Lars Montag’s Dreams Are Like Wild Tigers from Germany.
The nominations were chosen in a two-step procedure: an international committee consisting of five film experts and a group of four representative young people pre-selected eight films.
Then, a jury of five 13 to 14-year-old former YAA participants – Aifric (Ireland), Natalija (Montenegro), Tin (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Christina (Greenland) and Riana (Kosovo) - chose the three final nominees.
Over the weekend more than 50 European cinemas organised screenings, Q&As with the filmmakers and workshops.
The awards ceremony kicked-off the newly introduced Month of European Film, initiated and coordinated by the European Film Academy. The finale of the four-week-long celebration of European cinema will be the European Film Awards on December 10 in Reykjavik.
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