European Film Awards 2023: And the nominees are...

The European Film Academy has revealed the nominees for the main categories of the 36th European Film Awards (EFAs), which take place on 9 December in Berlin. (Scroll down for the full list.)

Three of the Best European Film nominees world premiered at Cannes and won major awards there (Anatomy Of A Fall; The Zone of Interest; Fallen Leaves), while the other two nominees premiered in Venice this year – Green Border and Me Captain - and also came home with trophies: Special Jury Prize and Best Actor respectively.

Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest leads the nominations with five nods, including Best Film and Best Director. The film won both the Cannes Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize, and has been selected as the UK’s official entry for the 2024 Oscars in the Best International Feature category.

Loosely based on Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, The Zone of Interest is Glazer’s first feature in 10 years, following 2013’s Under The Skin. It follows Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), who both build a dream life for their family in their home situated on the other side of the concentration camp wall. We observe the everyday domesticity of the family: friendly visits, servants keeping the house spotless, Hedwig tending to her Edenic “paradise garden” and appreciating the living space she has built next to a dying one. It is a profoundly disturbing and audacious portrait of what Hannah Arendt referred to as the “banality of evil”.

The film also nabbed nominations for Best Actress and Best Actor for Hüller and Friedel.

Hüller will be competing against herself in the Best Actress category, having picked up a second nomination for her role in Justine