Sevilla, 7 November

At the Sevilla European Film Festival, the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announced the nominations for the 22nd European Film Awards. Leading the field are A PROPHET, Jacques Audiard’s French prison drama with six nominations, and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, Danny Boyle's take on Bollywood that turned into a world-wide box-office phenomenon, with five nominations.

Both movies garnered nominations for European Film, European Actor (Dev Patel as Jamal and Tahar Rahim as Malik El Djebena), and European Director for Boyle and Audiard. Both films are also nominated for screenplay (Audiard and Thomas Bidegain for A PROPHET and Simon Beaufoy for SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) and cinematography (Stéphane Fontaine for A PROPHET and Anthony Dod Mantle for both SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and ANTICHRIST).

Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or-winner THE WHITE RIBBON about an authoritarian German village on the eve of World War I is up for four awards including European Film, Director and Screenwriter (both for Haneke) and Cinematographer for Christian Berger.

The remaining nominations for European Director went to Pedro Almodóvar for BROKEN EMBRACES (the Spanish romantic noir received two additional nominations for actress Penelope Cruz and composer Alberto Iglesias) and to Denmark’s Lars von Trier for his psychological horror drama ANTICHRIST (which received a third nomination for French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg).

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (UK), A PROPHET (France) and German-Austrian-French-Italian co-production THE WHITE RIBBON will be competing for the European Film 2009 prize alongside British teenage drama FISH TANK by Andrea Arnold (also nominated for European Director, the film’s main cast Katie Jarvis for best actress), Stephen Daldry’s postwar drama THE READER (Germany; with acting nominations for both Kate Winslet and German Shooting Star David Kross) as well as LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, Tomas Alfredson’s Swedish horror film which is also up for European Composer (Johan Söderqvist).

Further nominations went to actors Steve Evets (UK) for his role as Eric Bishop in Ken Loach’s football dramedy LOOKING FOR ERIC, German Moritz Bleibtreu (as Andreas Baader in Ulrich Edel’s 60s terrorist drama THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX), and Italian Filippo Timi (as Mussolini in Marco Bellocchio’s historical drama VINCERE).

Nominated actresses include Yolande Moreau (as painter Séraphine Louise in the French biopic SÉRAPHINE) and Noomi Rapace (Sweden) in the crime thriller THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. The latter film received a second nomination for composer Jakob Groth.

Nominations for the EFA PRIX D’EXCELLENCE 2009 went to: THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX’s Waldemar Pokromski for his achievements in Make Up and Hair, VINCERE’s Francesca Calvelli for the Editing, A PROPHET’s Brigitte Taillandier, Francis Wargnier, Jean-Paul Hurier and Marc Doisne for the Sound Design and COCO BEFORE CHANEL’s Catherine Leterrier for the Costume Design; the latter film received one more nomination for European Composer (Alexandre Desplat).

One nomination each got Russia’s drama PAPER SOLDIER about cosmonauts in the 60s for cinematography (Maxim Drozdov & Alisher Khamidkhodzhaev) and the Italian dramedy MID-AUGUST LUNCH for screenplay (Gianni di Gregorio).

The 2,000 EFA Members will now vote for the winners which will be presented during the Awards Ceremony on 12 December in Bochum.