Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland leads the nominations for the 39th European Film Awards with 11, one ahead of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La bola negra (The Black Ball) on 10. Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord is third with five. The European Film Academy announced the nominees in 16 categories on Saturday 14 November at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which earlier this week handed out its Agora industry awards. The winners will be named on 16 January 2027 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, the first time the ceremony has gone to Southeastern Europe.
The race picks up where Cannes left off. Pawlikowski, Calvo and Ambrossi shared the best director prize there in May, and all three are nominated again for European Director, alongside Mungiu, whose Fjord won the Palme d’Or. The five fiction features in the top category also include May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in September, so the year’s two biggest festival prizes are both in contention. The Academy says the nominations in its main categories reflect the votes of its 5,700 members, who now vote again to choose the winners.
Key facts
- Event: 39th European Film Awards (the Academy’s 2027 edition); nominations announced 14 November 2026 in Thessaloniki; ceremony 16 January 2027 in Athens
- Most nominations: Fatherland (11), La bola negra (10), Fjord (5), Rose (4)
- European Film has 15 nominees: five fiction features plus the five documentary and five animation nominees
- France is a credited production country on 11 of the 15 European Film nominees, by FilmBunch’s count of the Academy’s listings
- Three nominees carry Qatari or Emirati co-production credits, all in the Discovery and short film categories
The full list of nominees
European Film – Fatherland (Poland, Germany, Italy, France), dir. Paweł Pawlikowski; prod. Mario Gianani, Ewa Puszczyńska, Jeanne Tremsal, Lorenzo Mieli, Edward Berger, Dimitri Rassam, Lorenzo Gangarossa – Fjord (Romania, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland), dir. and prod. Cristian Mungiu – In Waves (France, Belgium), dir. Phuong Mai Nguyen; prod. Priscilla Bertin, Judith Nora, Nick Shumaker – Iron Boy (Le corset) (France, Belgium), dir. Louis Clichy; prod. Nicolas de Rosanbo, Céline Vanlint – Jim Queen (France, Belgium), dir. Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané; prod. Arthur Delabays, David Alric – La bola negra (Spain, France), dir. and prod. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi – La Gradiva (France, Italy), dir. Marine Atlan; prod. Inès Daïen Dasi – Letters from the Silenced Country (Listy) (Poland, Lithuania, Germany), dir. Andrei Kutsila; prod. Mirosław Dembiński – Lucy Lost (France), dir. Olivier Clert; prod. Marc du Pontavice, Lucie Bolze – NAZA (UK), dir. Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor; prod. Harry Davies, Lindsay Poulton, James Wilson – Rehearsals for a Revolution (Czech Republic, Spain), dir. Pegah Ahangarani; prod. Kaveh Farnam, Adrià Monés Murlans – To Hold a Mountain (Planina) (Montenegro, Serbia, France, Slovenia, Croatia), dir. Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić; prod. Biljana Tutorov – Viva Carmen (Carmen, l’oiseau rebelle) (France), dir. Sébastien Laudenbach; prod. Damien Brunner, Sarah Delmas, Thibaut Ruby, Pierre-Henri Léon – Whispers in the Woods (Le chant des forêts) (France), dir. Vincent Munier; prod. Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, Laurent Baujard, Vincent Munier – Woman Unknown (Kvinde ukendt) (Denmark, Latvia, Sweden), dir. May el-Toukhy; prod. Mikael Rieks
European Documentary – Letters from the Silenced Country, Andrei Kutsila – NAZA, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor – Rehearsals for a Revolution, Pegah Ahangarani – To Hold a Mountain, Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić – Whispers in the Woods, Vincent Munier
European Animation Film – In Waves, Phuong Mai Nguyen – Iron Boy, Louis Clichy – Jim Queen, Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané – Lucy Lost, Olivier Clert – Viva Carmen, Sébastien Laudenbach
European Director – Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, La bola negra – Cristian Mungiu, Fjord – Paweł Pawlikowski, Fatherland – Sandra Wollner, Everytime – Andrey Zvyagintsev, Minotaur
European Screenwriter – Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi and Alberto Conejero, La bola negra – Cristian Mungiu, Fjord – Paweł Pawlikowski and Henk Handloegten, Fatherland – Sandra Wollner, Everytime – Simon Lyashenko and Andrey Zvyagintsev, Minotaur
European Actress – Mathilde Arcel, Woman Unknown – Penélope Cruz, Bunker – Sandra Hüller, Fatherland – Sandra Hüller, Rose – Renate Reinsve, Fjord – Léa Seydoux, Gentle Monster
European Actor – Swann Arlaud, A Man of His Time (Notre salut) – Javier Bardem, The Beloved (El ser querido) – Andrew Scott, Elsinore – Sebastian Stan, Fjord – Hanns Zischler, Fatherland
European Casting Director – Nina Haun, Magdalena Szwarcbart and Karen Lindsay-Stewart, Fatherland – Eva Leira and Yolanda Serrano, La bola negra – Jessica Ronane, Elsinore
European Cinematographer – Gris Jordana, La bola negra – Frank van den Eeden, Coward – Łukasz Żal, Fatherland
European Composer (Original Score) – Volker Bertelmann, Bunker – Tara Nome Doyle, Rose – Alberto Iglesias, Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad)
European Costume Designer – Doris Bartelt, Rose – Ana López Cobos, La bola negra – Rebecca Richmond and Jūlija Volkinšteine, Woman Unknown
European Editor – Alberto Gutiérrez, La bola negra – Gesa Jäger, Yellow Letters (Gelbe Briefe) – Paweł Pawlikowski and Piotr Wójcik, Fatherland
European Make-up & Hair Artist – Pablo Morillas and Marilo Osuna, La bola negra – Evalotte Oosterop and Pierre-Olivier Persin, Coward – Waldemar Pokromski, Fatherland
European Production Designer – Roger Bellés, La bola negra – Olivier Meidinger, Rose – Katarzyna Sobańska and Marcel Sławiński, Fatherland
European Sound – Robert Farr, Lars Ginzel and Benjamin Hörbe, NAZA – Lars Ginzel and Tarn Willers, Fatherland – Rodrigo Madrigal, Anna Harrington, Alejandro López and Mayte Cazorla, La bola negra
European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI – 17 (North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia), Kosara Mitic – At Night (UK), Beatrice Gibson – Cute (Denmark, Norway), Marlene Emilie Lyngstad – Flesh & Fuel (Du fioul dans les artères) (France, Poland), Pierre Le Gall – The Guest (Gæsten) (Denmark), Mads Mengel – Thirteen in Gaza (Palestine, Qatar), Hosam Abu Dan
European Short Film (announced 13 November at the Seville European Film Festival) – God Is Shy (Dieu est timide) (France), Jocelyn Charles – L’Mina (France, Morocco, Italy, Qatar, United Arab Emirates), Randa Maroufi – Morning Circle (Morgenkreis) (Germany, Canada, United Arab Emirates), Basma al-Sharif – The End (Sweden, France, Denmark), Niki Lindroth von Bahr – Unleaded 95 (Bleifrei 95) (Germany, Austria), Emma Hütt and Tina Muffler
European Young Audience Award (announced on 1 November in Glasgow; the winner is chosen by viewers aged 12 to 19) – Hold Onto Me (Krata me) (Cyprus, Greece, Denmark), Myrsini Aristidou – I Matter (Eu contez) (Romania, Germany, Belgium), Alina Șerban – Iron Boy (Le corset) (France, Belgium), Louis Clichy
European Achievement in World Cinema (honorary award, announced in October) – Hiam Abbass
How the two leaders got there
Fatherland, a black-and-white drama about the writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika, owes its total to breadth. Besides European Film, director and screenwriter, it is nominated in six of the eight craft categories, from Łukasz Żal’s cinematography to make-up and sound; only costume and score passed it by. Both leads are in the acting races, Sandra Hüller as Erika and Hanns Zischler as Thomas. Hüller is nominated twice, also for Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, which collects four nominations without a place in the European Film category. Fatherland goes straight on to open the International Film Festival of India in Goa on 20 November.
La bola negra gets to 10 without a single acting nomination. Built on an unfinished last work by Federico García Lorca and set across three periods of 20th-century Spain, it is nominated for European Film, director and screenplay, and in seven of the eight craft categories, missing only score. It is Spain’s entry for the international feature Oscar, and on Thursday it led the nominations for Spain’s Premios Forqué with five. Between them, the two leaders hold 21 of the 84 nomination slots across the 18 competitive categories, by FilmBunch’s count.
Fjord’s five are concentrated at the top: European Film, director and screenplay for Mungiu, and acting nominations for Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan. A co-production of six countries, it has the widest spread of the five fiction features in the top category. Mungiu was due to speak on Saturday at the American Film Market in Los Angeles, where Romania is the market’s first Country of Focus.
A wider European Film category
The European Film category runs to 15 titles because the five documentary and five animation nominees also compete in it. That leaves five places for fiction: Fatherland, Fjord, La bola negra, Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva and Woman Unknown, which reportedly sold to Cohen Media Group for the US during the AFM. Several fiction titles with nominations elsewhere missed the top category as a result, among them Minotaur, Elsinore, Everytime and Gentle Monster, as Screen International pointed out. The Academy says the 15 nominees come from 19 European countries and that six of them, 40 per cent, were directed or co-directed by women.
The production credits the Academy lists for those 15 films show how much of the field runs through France. By FilmBunch’s count, France is a credited country on 11 of them, and three, Lucy Lost, Viva Carmen and Whispers in the Woods, are solely French. Belgium appears on three, each time alongside France. The four nominees without a French credit are Letters from the Silenced Country, NAZA, Rehearsals for a Revolution and Woman Unknown.
Gulf and Arab credits
Gulf co-production money reaches the nominations only in the smaller categories. Hosam Abu Dan’s Thirteen in Gaza, a Palestine–Qatar co-production, is one of the six first fiction features in Discovery, a category picked by a committee of FIPRESCI critics and experts appointed by the Academy’s board rather than by the membership vote. In the short film category, Randa Maroufi’s L’Mina carries Moroccan, Qatari and Emirati credits, and Basma al-Sharif’s Morning Circle an Emirati one. The Academy’s October shortlists held three other titles with Saudi or Qatari credits, and none was nominated: the fiction features Conversation with the Sea by Muayad Alayan and Salvation by Emin Alper, both with Saudi credits, and Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, a UK–Qatar co-production.
What happens next
The Academy’s members now vote on the winners, while the young audience juries vote in partner cities across Europe until the day of the ceremony. Hiam Abbass, the Nazareth-born actor who has lived in Paris since the late 1980s, will be the honorary guest in Athens, and the ceremony will be streamed live on the Academy’s website. The previous edition was led by Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which won six prizes including European Film, ahead of Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt with five, Screen reported.
Sources
- European Film Academy, Here come the nominees for the European Film Awards 2027!, 14 November 2026
- European Film Academy, 39th European Film Awards nominations and shortlists (official site)
- European Film Academy, European Short Film nominees announced at the Seville European Film Festival, 13 November 2026
- European Film Academy, Hiam Abbass to receive the European Achievement in World Cinema award
- European Film Academy, European Young Audience Award 2027 nominees
- European Film Academy, awards ceremony, Athens, 16 January 2027
- TrustNordisk, Woman Unknown takes home the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival (press release), September 2026
- Screen International, Fatherland and La Bola Negra lead European Film Awards 2026 nominations, 14 November 2026